Education and Internal Migration : Evidence From a Child Labor Reform in Spain

We exploit a child labor regulation that raised the minimum working age from 14 to 16 while leaving the age for compulsory education at 14 to provide new evidence on the causal effect of education on migration. Individuals born at the beginning of the year are more likely to complete compulsory and post-compulsory education if they turn 14 after the reform. Men’s internal migration flows were unaffected by the reform. For women, long-distance migration and the distance moved by migrants declined after the reform, whereas certain types of short-distance moves increased. Some implications of these findings and a consideration of their external validity are also provided