IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cel/dpaper/22.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Quiet Revolution and the Family: Gender Composition of Tertiary Education and Early Fertility Patterns

Author

Listed:
  • Alena Bičáková
  • Štěpán Jurajda

Abstract

It is well known that highly female fields of study in tertiary education are characterized by higher fertility. However, existing work does not disentangle the selection-causality nexus. We use variation in gender composition of fields of study implied by the recent expansion of tertiary education in 19 European countries and a difference-in-differences research design, to show that the share of women on study peer groups affects early fertility levels only little. Early fertility by endogamous couples, i.e., by tertiary graduates from the same field of study, declines for women and increases for men with the share of women in the group, but non-endogamous fertility almost fully compensates for these effects, consistent with higher early fertility in highly female fields of study being driven by selection of family-oriented students into these fields. We also show that the EU-wide level of gender segregation across fields of study has not changed since 2000, despite heterogeneous country-level evolution.

Suggested Citation

  • Alena Bičáková & Štěpán Jurajda, 2014. "The Quiet Revolution and the Family: Gender Composition of Tertiary Education and Early Fertility Patterns," Discussion Papers 22, Central European Labour Studies Institute (CELSI).
    • Handle: RePEc:cel:dpaper:22
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://celsi.sk/media/discussion_papers/DP22.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Peter Arcidiacono & Esteban Aucejo & Andrew Hussey & Kenneth Spenner, 2013. "Racial Segregation Patterns in Selective Universities," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 56(4), pages 1039-1060.
    2. Badi H. Baltagi & Dong Li, 2002. "Series Estimation of Partially Linear Panel Data Models with Fixed Effects," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 3(1), pages 103-116, May.
    3. Robinson, Peter M, 1988. "Root- N-Consistent Semiparametric Regression," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(4), pages 931-954, July.
    4. Vikesh Amin & Jere Behrman, 2014. "Do more-schooled women have fewer children and delay childbearing? Evidence from a sample of US twins," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 27(1), pages 1-31, January.
    5. Jeremy Greenwood & Nezih Guner & Georgi Kocharkov & Cezar Santos, 2014. "Marry Your Like: Assortative Mating and Income Inequality," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(5), pages 348-353, May.
    6. Betsey Stevenson & Justin Wolfers, 2007. "Marriage and Divorce: Changes and their Driving Forces," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(2), pages 27-52, Spring.
    7. Fletcher, Jason M. & Ross, Stephen L. & Zhang, Yuxiu, 2020. "The consequences of friendships: Evidence on the effect of social relationships in school on academic achievement," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    8. Claudia Goldin, 2006. "The Quiet Revolution That Transformed Women's Employment, Education, and Family," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(2), pages 1-21, May.
    9. Christian Bredemeier & Falko Juessen, 2013. "Assortative Mating and Female Labor Supply," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 31(3), pages 603-631.
    10. Juan J. Dolado & Florentino Felgueroso & Juan F. Jimeno., "undated". "Recent Trends in Occupational Segregation by Gender: A Look Across the Atlantic," Working Papers 2002-11, FEDEA.
    11. Macpherson, David A & Hirsch, Barry T, 1995. "Wages and Gender Composition: Why Do Women's Jobs Pay Less?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 13(3), pages 426-471, July.
    12. Brian A. Jacob, 2002. "Where the boys aren't: Non-cognitive skills, returns to school and the gender gap in higher education," NBER Working Papers 8964, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Magali Beffy & Denis Fougère & Arnaud Maurel, 2012. "Choosing the Field of Study in Postsecondary Education: Do Expected Earnings Matter?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 94(1), pages 334-347, February.
    14. Josh Angrist, 2002. "How Do Sex Ratios Affect Marriage and Labor Markets? Evidence from America's Second Generation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(3), pages 997-1038.
    15. Shang-Jin Wei & Xiaobo Zhang, 2011. "The Competitive Saving Motive: Evidence from Rising Sex Ratios and Savings Rates in China," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 119(3), pages 511-564.
    16. Suqin Ge, 2011. "Women's College Decisions: How Much Does Marriage Matter?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 29(4), pages 773-818.
    17. Suqin Ge & Fang Yang, 2013. "Accounting For The Gender Gap In College Attainment," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 51(1), pages 478-499, January.
    18. Michael Svarer, 2007. "Working Late: Do Workplace Sex Ratios Affect Partnership Formation and Dissolution?," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 42(3).
    19. Jacob, Brian A., 2002. "Where the boys aren't: non-cognitive skills, returns to school and the gender gap in higher education," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 21(6), pages 589-598, December.
    20. Terra G. McKinnish, 2007. "Sexually Integrated Workplaces and Divorce: Another Form of On-the-Job Search," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 42(2).
    21. Goldin, Claudia, 2006. "The Quiet Revolution That Transformed Women’s Employment, Education, and Family," Scholarly Articles 2943933, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    22. Abdurrahman Aydemir & George J. Borjas, 2011. "Attenuation Bias in Measuring the Wage Impact of Immigration," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 29(1), pages 69-113, January.
    23. Gustaf Bruze, 2011. "Marriage Choices of Movie Stars: Does Spouse's Education Matter?," Journal of Human Capital, University of Chicago Press, vol. 5(1), pages 1-28.
    24. Becker, Gary S, 1973. "A Theory of Marriage: Part I," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(4), pages 813-846, July-Aug..
    25. Lindley, Joanne, 2012. "The gender dimension of technical change and the role of task inputs," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 516-526.
    26. Jeanne Lafortune, 2013. "Making Yourself Attractive: Pre-marital Investments and the Returns to Education in the Marriage Market," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(2), pages 151-178, April.
    27. Jason M. Fletcher & Stephen L. Ross & Yuxiu Zhang, 2013. "The Determinants and Consequences of Friendship Composition," Working papers 2013-31, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    28. Stepan Jurajda & Daniel Munich, 2011. "Gender Gap in Performance under Competitive Pressure: Admissions to Czech Universities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(3), pages 514-518, May.
    29. Michael Baker & Nicole M. Fortin, 2001. "Occupational gender composition and wages in Canada, 1987–1988," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 34(2), pages 345-376, May.
    30. Gary S. Becker & William H. J. Hubbard & Kevin M. Murphy, 2010. "The Market for College Graduates and the Worldwide Boom in Higher Education of Women," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(2), pages 229-233, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alena Bičáková & Štěpán Jurajda, 2017. "Gender composition of college graduates by field of study and early fertility," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 15(4), pages 1323-1343, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alena Bičáková & Štěpán Jurajda, 2017. "Gender composition of college graduates by field of study and early fertility," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 15(4), pages 1323-1343, December.
    2. Bicakova, Alena & Jurajda, Štepán, 2016. "Field-of-Study Homogamy," IZA Discussion Papers 9844, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Timothy Halliday & Sumner La Croix, 2013. "Sons, Daughters, and Labor Supply in Early Twentieth-Century Hawaii," Working Papers 201318, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics.
    4. Weiss, Yoram & Yi, Junjian & Zhang, Junsen, 2013. "Hypergamy, Cross-Boundary Marriages, and Family Behavior," IZA Discussion Papers 7293, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Ran Abramitzky & Adeline Delavande & Luis Vasconcelos, 2011. "Marrying Up: The Role of Sex Ratio in Assortative Matching," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(3), pages 124-157, July.
    6. Rodríguez-González, Ana, 2021. "The Impact of the Female Advantage in Education on the Marriage Market," Working Papers 2021:5, Lund University, Department of Economics.
    7. Carlana, Michela & Tabellini, Marco, 2018. "Happily Ever After: Immigration, Natives' Marriage, and Fertility," Working Paper Series rwp18-035, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    8. Daiji Kawaguchi & Soohyung Lee, 2017. "Brides For Sale: Cross-Border Marriages And Female Immigration," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(2), pages 633-654, April.
    9. Hanzhe Zhang, 2021. "An Investment-and-Marriage Model with Differential Fecundity: On the College Gender Gap," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 129(5), pages 1464-1486.
    10. Suqin Ge & Fang Yang, 2013. "Accounting For The Gender Gap In College Attainment," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 51(1), pages 478-499, January.
    11. , Stone Center & Yonzan, Nishant, 2020. "Assortative Mating and Labor Income Inequality: Evidence from Fifty Years of Coupling in the U.S," SocArXiv 4whvs, Center for Open Science.
    12. Nicola Barban & Elisabetta De Cao & Sonia Oreffice & Climent Quintana-Domeque, 2016. "Assortative Mating on Education: A Genetic Assessment," Working Papers 2016-034, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    13. Eckstein, Zvi & Keane, Michael P. & Lifshitz, Osnat, 2023. "What Explains the Growing Gender Education Gap? The Effects of Parental Background, the Labor Market and the Marriage Market on College Attainment," IZA Discussion Papers 16612, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. Hani Mansour & Terra McKinnish, 2018. "Same-occupation spouses: preferences or search costs?," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 31(4), pages 1005-1033, October.
    15. Bertrand, Marianne, 2011. "New Perspectives on Gender," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 17, pages 1543-1590, Elsevier.
    16. Zhang, Hanzhe, 2019. "An Investment-and-Marriage Model with Differential Fecundity," Working Papers 2019-11, Michigan State University, Department of Economics.
    17. Jeremy Greenwood & Nezih Guner & Guillaume Vandenbroucke, 2017. "Family Economics Writ Large," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1346-1434, December.
    18. Domenico Tabasso, 2011. "With or Without You: Hazard of Divorce and Intra-household Allocation of Time," Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series wp2011n07, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne.
    19. Pekkarinen, Tuomas, 2012. "Gender Differences in Education," IZA Discussion Papers 6390, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. Zang, Emma & Zheng, Hui, 2018. "Does the sex ratio at sexual maturity affect men's later-life mortality risks? Evidence from historical China," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 202(C), pages 61-69.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Field-of-Study Gender Segregation; Tertiary Graduates; Fertility;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I23 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Higher Education; Research Institutions
    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cel:dpaper:22. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Martin Kahanec (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/celsisk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.