This study analyzes the effect of education on the number of children, childlessness, and the timing of births. We use exogenous variation from a mandatory reform of compulsory schooling in West Germany to deal with the endogeneity of schooling. In contrast to studies for other developed...

This paper investigates the effect of education on fertility under inflexible labor market conditions. We exploit exogenous variation from a German compulsory schooling reform to deal with the endogeneity of education. By using data from two complementary data sets, we examine different...

This study analyzes the effect of education on the number of children, childlessness, and the timing of births.We use exogenous variation from a mandatory reform of compulsory schooling in West Germany to deal with the endogeneity of schooling. In contrast to studies for other developed...

Children born at the end of the academic year have lower educational attainment, on average, than those born at the start of the academic year. Previous research shows that the difference is most pronounced early in pupils' school lives, but remains evident and statistically significant in...

We present evidence that the practice of holding back poorly performing students affects estimates of the impact of class size on student outcomes based on within-school variation of cohort size over time. This type of variation is commonly used to identify class size effects. We build a...

This paper studies how the type of education pursued at an early age affects family formation. I focus on a French reform that delayed the age of which students were tracked into either general or vocational education from age 11 to age 13. For the most part, tracking was replaced with grouping...

Many states require children to reach five years of age by a specified calendar date in order to begin kindergarten. We use birth certificate records from 1999 to 2004 to assess whether parents systematically time childbirth before school cutoff dates to capture the option value of sending their...

This paper presents the results of a randomized study of a home visiting program implemented in Germany for low-income, first-time mothers. A major goal of the program is to improve the participants’ economic self-sufficiency and family planning. I use administrative data from the German...

We investigate the spillover effects of early-life medical treatments on the siblings of treated children. We use a regression discontinuity design that exploits changes in medical treatments across the very low birth weight (VLBW) cutoff. Using administrative data from Denmark, we first confirm...

This paper presents results from a randomized evaluation of a home visiting program for disadvantaged first-time mothers and their families implemented in three German federal states. I analysis the impact of the intervention on maternal employment, school attendance, child care use, fertility,...