Education, Teenage Fertility and Labour Market Participation, Evidence from Ecuador

Using a representative sample of Ecuadorian young women’s households, this paper focuses on the role played by education in shaping fertility choices and labor market participation. Education, which is found to be endogenous with respect to teenage childbearing, is instrumented by a reform that took place in 1977. Then, in a model where the choices to be a mother and to be in the labor force are considered simultaneously, we find evidence that schooling is positively related to wom-en’s labor market participation rate and negatively to early motherhood. The last section concludes stressing the potential intergenerational effects of changes in the age at first birth, showing that firstborn children born to older mothers have better educational outcomes than those born to young-er ones. We find that educational policies improve women’s conditions, lowering the risk of teenage childbearing and increasing labor market attachment.