Presenter:

Heather Royer

Authors:

Heather Royer, Justin McCrary

Chair: Katherine Swartz; Discussant: Dahlia Remler Mon June 5, 2006 17:15-18:45 Room 226

This paper uses age-at-school-entry policies to identify the effect of maternal education on fertility and infant health. In particular, we exploit the fact that the year in which a child starts school is a discontinuous function of exact date of birth. For example, in California and Texas, our two study states, children must be 5 years old on December 1st (California) or September 1st (Texas) in the year in which they begin kindergarten. As a consequence of these policies, children born within one or two days of one another enter school at different ages and have different levels of education throughout school enrollment. Because individuals born near in time are likely similar, any differences in education at motherhood for individuals born near these entry dates are arguably exogenous. The crux of our identification strategy is to compare fertility and infant health outcomes for mothers born just prior to, and just subsequent to, the school entry date, and to relate the magnitude of these differences to the maternal education discontinuity.

Our analysis points to five key conclusions:

1. School entry policies have a significant impact on schooling at motherhood: one-fourth of young Texas mothers born after the school entry date have a year less education than they otherwise would, had they been born before the entry date. For California, our estimate is one-seventh of a year. These education discontinuities are estimated precisely, with a t-ratio over 20 for Texas and over 8 for California.
2. Maternal education does not significantly impact fertility: women born just before and after the school entry date are equally likely to become mothers, and these women give birth at similar ages.
3. Maternal education does not significantly impact infant health: women born just before and after the entry date give birth to children of similar health endowment, as proxied by birth weight, prematurity, and rate of infant mortality.
4. Maternal education does improve mating market outcomes: women born just after the entry date have younger and lesser educated mates than women born just before.
5. The research design is valid: women born just before and after the entry date have similar characteristics at their own birth, and their grandparents have similar attributes.

Given the fourth effect on mate quality, our infant health results are particularly surprising, as the combined effect of the direct impact of mother’s schooling and the indirect impact of her mate’s quality is zero in terms of infant health. Assortative mating effects would have been expected to lead to important infant health differences, even if maternal education were unimportant in isolation.

Our findings suggest that school entry policies manipulate primarily the education of young women at risk of dropping out of school. For these women, education may play a limited role in fertility and child investment.