The Impact of Female Education on Teenage Fertility: Evidence from Turkey

This paper explores the causal relationship between female education and teenage fertility by exploiting a change in the compulsory schooling law (CSL) in Turkey. Using variation in the exposure to the CSL across cohorts and variation across provinces by the intensity of additional classrooms constructed in the birth provinces as an instrumental variable, the results indicate that primary school completion reduces teenage fertility by 0.37 births and the incidence of teenage childbearing by around 25 percentage points. Exploring heterogeneous effects indicates that female education reduces teenage fertility more in provinces with lower population density and higher agricultural activity. Finally, the CSL postpones childbearing by delaying marriage, thereby reducing fertility.