Browsing by Author "Akyol, Pelin"

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8

Open Access
Compulsory schooling reform and intimate partner violence in Turkey
(Elsevier, 2022-11) Akyol, Pelin; Kırdar, M. G.
We examine how Turkey's 1997 compulsory schooling policy affects intimate partner violence (IPV) using the 2008 and 2014 Turkish National Survey of Domestic Violence Against Women and regression discontinuity design. We find conclusive evidence that the policy reduces physical violence against rural women, whereas this evidence is suggestive for the sample of all women. For the urban sample, we reveal large negative, but statistically insignificant, effects on sexual violence and partners preventing women from working. We find null policy effects on psychological violence for the sample of all women. The policy appears to have been protective against IPV for women overall. In addition, we show that the policy effects are realized through changing partner characteristics as well as women's increased schooling. Our results contradict previous evidence for Turkey, and we demonstrate that the previous evidence misclassifies two key variables.
Open Access
Education and consanguineous marriage
(The University of Chicago Press, 2023-01-25) Akyol, Pelin; Mocan, N.
At least one of every five marriages is consanguineous (between couples who aresecond cousins or closer) in the Middle East and North Africa, and the rate ishigher than 50% in some parts of the world. We find that a Turkish education re-form that increased mandatory schooling by 3 years made women less likely tofind consanguineous marriage an acceptable practice. The reform reduced wom-en’s propensity to marry a first cousin or a blood relative, and it altered women’spreferences in favor of personal autonomy, indicating that educational attain-ment alters behaviors and attitudes that may be rooted in culture.
Open Access
Education and voluntary work: Evidence from Turkish time use survey
(Springer, 2022-06) Akar, B.; Akyol, Pelin; Okten, Çağla
We use the extension of compulsory education from five to eight years in Turkey as an instrument for educational attainment to investigate the causal effects of education on voluntary work by utilizing Turkish Time Use Survey data. Existing studies use ordinary least squares regressions and establish a positive and significant association; however, such correlation may be induced by the endogeneity problems such as omitted variable bias and reverse causality. In line with the previous studies, our OLS results also show that there is a positive association between schooling and men’s voluntary work. However, when we use the education reform as an instrument for education, a different picture emerges. The exogenous education reform increased the education levels of individuals significantly. Using the education reform as an instrument for education level, we find that increased education of compliers has a negative but insignificant causal impact on the probability and hours of voluntary work for men. Our results suggest that omitted individual factors such as ability and intelligence, and unobservable family characteristics such as values and social norms are likely to have played a role in the positive association of education with voluntary work found in OLS studies. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.
Open Access
Effects of education on elderly care preferences
(Routledge, 2024-12-10) Akyol, Pelin
This paper explores the effects of education on elderly care preferences by using the 1997 compulsory schooling reform in Turkey, which extended compulsory schooling from five to eight years, as an instrument. Our results provide evidence that increased schooling due to this reform decreases the likelihood of females agreeing with the statement that ‘children should look after their parents when they are old’. Additionally, it increases their own intention to use formal care options, such as nursing homes, hospices, or home care services, in their old age. The impact of education on the elderly care preferences of males is found to be insignificant. By establishing the causal relationship between education and preferences for elderly care, this paper contributes to our understanding of how higher education can influence intergenerational dynamics and the demand for formal care services.
Embargo
Effects of grandmothers' proximity on mothers' labour force participation
(Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2025-02-05) Akyol, Pelin; Yilmaz, Zeynep
This paper investigates the causal effects of grandmothers’ geographical proximity onlabour supply decisions of married women with young children by leveraging a noveldata set from Turkey. We deal with the reverse causality and endogeneity problemsarising from mothers’ and grandmothers’ joint location and labour supply decisions byimplementing a two-stage least squares estimation method using the number of alivegrandmothers as an instrument. We argue that grandmothers’ proximity can increasemothers’ labour supply through their free and ﬂexible childcare services. On the otherhand, geographically close grandmothers can reduce mothers’ labour supply by imposingthe traditional gender norms prevalent in Turkey or requiring them to take on elderlycaregiving duties. The overall effect depends on the relative size of these opposing factors.Our ﬁndings suggest that living in the same neighbourhood as grandmothers increasesthe probability of labour force participation and the employment rates of women withyoung children by 18.2 ppt and 16.4 ppt, respectively. These results are mostly driven bythe non-village sample. The ‘traditional gender norm’ channel explains the insigniﬁcantimpact of grandmothers’ proximity on the labour market outcomes of mothers who havebeen raised in villages.
Open Access
Hit or miss? Test taking behavior in multiple choice exams
(Groupe des Ecoles Nationales d'Economie et Statistique (GENES), 2022-09) Akyol, Pelin
This paper is the first to structurally model how a test taker answers questions in a multiple choice exam. We allow for the possibility of a penalty for a wrong answer which makes risk averse examinees more likely to skip questions. Despite the lack of item response data, we can estimate the model by using the insight that skipping behavior, together with penalties for wrong answers, makes certain scores much more likely than others. Using data from the Turkish University Entrance Exam, we estimate the model and find that candidates’ attitudes towards risk differ according to their gender and ability with females and those with high ability being significantly more risk-averse. However, the impact of differences in risk aversion on scores is small. As a result, a higher guessing penalty increases the precision of the exam, and does so with a minimal impact on gender bias.
Open Access
The role of religion in female labor supply: Evidence from two Muslim denominations
(Cambridge University Press, 2022) Akyol, Pelin; Ökten, Çaǧla
This paper investigates the association between religion and female labor market outcomes using new micro-level data on two distinct Muslim denominations in Turkey: Sunni and Alevi Muslims. We find a positive and significant association between being an Alevi Muslim and female labor force participation and employment, whereas there are no significant differences in male labor market outcomes between the two denominations. We provide evidence that Alevi Muslims have more gender-equal views regarding the role of women in the labor market and consider themselves as more modern. Both Sunnis and Alevis consider themselves as believers in religion (Islam). However, Sunnis are more likely to abide by the rules of religion. We argue that differences in views on gender roles and self-identity regarding modernity between the two denominations drive the results on female labor market outcomes. © Université catholique de Louvain 2022.
Open Access
Taking PISA seriously: how accurate are low-stakes exams?
(Springer, 2021-06) Akyol, Pelin; Krishna, K.; Wang, J.
PISA is seen as the gold standard for evaluating educational outcomes worldwide. Yet, being a low-stakes exam, students may not take it seriously resulting in downward biased scores and inaccurate rankings. This paper provides a method to identify and account for non-serious behavior in low-stakes exams by leveraging information in computer-based assessments in PISA 2015. Our method corrects for non-serious behavior by fully imputing scores for items not taken seriously. We compare the scores/rankings calculated by our method to the scores/rankings calculated by giving zero points to skipped items as well as to the scores/rankings calculated by treating skipped items at the end of the exam as if they were not administered, which is the procedure followed by PISA. We show that a country can improve its ranking by up to 15 places by encouraging its own students to take the exam seriously and that the PISA approach corrects for only about half of the bias generated by the non-seriousness.