Education policy and early fertility: Lessons from an expansion of upper secondary schooling

• We study a reform that prolonged vocational tracks in upper secondary school.
• We exploit the staggered introduction of the program across municipalities.
• Our IV estimates show that the reform delayed childbearing for women.

This paper studies the effects of education policy on early fertility. We study a major educational reform in Sweden in which vocational tracks in upper secondary school were prolonged from two to three years and the curricula were made more academic. Our identification strategy takes advantage of cross-regional and cross-time variation in the implementation of a pilot scheme preceding the reform in which several municipalities evaluated the new policy. The empirical analysis draws on rich population micro data. We find that women who enrolled in the new programs were significantly less likely to give birth early in life. There is however, no statistically significant effect on men's fertility decisions. Our results suggest that the social benefits of changes in education policy may extend beyond those usually claimed.