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Women's Education: Harbinger of Another Spring? Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Turkey

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  • Mehmet Alper Dinçer
  • Neeraj Kaushal
  • Michael Grossman

Abstract

We use the 1997 Education Law in Turkey that increased compulsory formal schooling from five to eight years to study the effect of women's education on a range of outcomes relating to women's fertility, their children's health and measures of empowerment. We apply an instrumental variables methodology and find that a 10 percentage point increase in the proportion of ever married women with eight years of schooling lowered number of pregnancies per woman by 0.13 and number of children per women by 0.11. There is also some evidence of a decline in child mortality, caused by mother's education, but effects turn statistically insignificant in our preferred models. We also find that a 10 percentage point increase in the proportion with eight years of schooling raised the proportion of women using modern family planning methods by eight to nine percent and the proportion of women with knowledge of their ovulation cycle by five to seven percent. However, we find little evidence that schooling changed women's attitudes towards gender equality.

Suggested Citation

  • Mehmet Alper Dinçer & Neeraj Kaushal & Michael Grossman, 2013. "Women's Education: Harbinger of Another Spring? Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Turkey," NBER Working Papers 19597, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:19597
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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health
    • I24 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Inequality
    • I25 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Economic Development
    • J12 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure
    • 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

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