Educational attainment and fertility: Do genetic endowments matter?

Selin Köksal , London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Nicola Barban, University of Bologna
Elisabetta De Cao, London School of Economics and Political Science
Marco Francesconi, University of Essex

A rich body of demographic research has investigated the relationship between educational attainment and fertility. Even though fertility is a complex process that is mutually shaped by biological and sociological factors, and their interactions, the genetic propensity of reproductive behaviour and the way it interact with the social environment remains an overlooked factor within the fertility literature. Relying on UK Biobank data, this study exploits compulsory schooling age reform in the UK enacted in 1972 as a natural experiment to uncover, first, the causal impact of education on fertility outcomes. Second, we interact the effect of the reform with polygenic indices of educational attainment and fertility, to examine whether the effect of educational attainment on the quantity and timing of fertility varies by on genetic endowments. We find that staying in school one year longer increases the age at first birth and reduces the probability of teenage births for women while it has no effect on number of children both for men and women. Lastly, we show that the schooling reform was particularly effective in reducing teenage fertility for women who are genetically more prone to study fewer years.

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 Presented in Session 38. Fertility and Education