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Labour force participation and marital fertility of Italian women: The role of education

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Abstract.

This paper uses data from the 1993 Survey of Household Income and Wealth conducted by the Bank of Italy in order to estimate a reduced form purist model of female marital fertility and labour force participation. It focuses in particular on the effect of formal education on both fertility and labour force participation, and accounts for the potential endogeneity of education. Our estimates show that increasing education up to the upper secondary level exerts ceteris paribus a positive effect on marital fertility at ages 21–39 and that highly educated women postpone fertility and have a higher labour market attachment.

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Correspondence to Massimiliano Bratti.

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I wish to thank participants at the 15th Annual Conference of the European Society for Population Economics 2001 (Athens), the 16th Italian Conference of Labour Economics 2001 (Florence), especially my discussant Emilia Del Bono, the Royal Economic Society Annual Conference 2002 (Warwick), Luca Mancini, Jeremy Smith and the anonymous referee of this Journal for useful comments. The usual disclaimer applies. The Bank of Italy is gratefully acknowledged as the original depository of the Survey of Household Income and Wealth data used in this paper. Funding from the Italian Ministry of University and Scientific Research (MURST) Project “Too many or too few? The relationship between population dynamics and socio-economic development” is also gratefully acknowledged. Responsible editor: Alessandro Cigno.

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Bratti, M. Labour force participation and marital fertility of Italian women: The role of education. J Popul Econ 16, 525–554 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00148-003-0142-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00148-003-0142-5

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