Essays on the effects of compulsory schooling: education, labor market, and time use outcomes

Abstract

This thesis consists of four essays on the effects of the compulsory schooling reform, which extends the mandatory years of schooling from five to eight years in 1997 in Turkey. The first essay utilizes the exogenous education reform as an instrument for the educational attainment to investigate the causal effects of education on voluntary work. The reform increases the education levels of individuals significantly, and increased education of compliers has a negative but insignificant causal impact on the probability and hours of voluntary work for men. The second essay investigates the impact of increased education, due to the exogenous education reform which extended mandatory secular education by three years, on time spent in religious activities. For women, increased education has a negative causal impact on the allocation of time to religious activities; however, for males, there are no significant effects of education on time spent in religious activities. The third essay examines the impact of the extension of mandatory education on mothers’ time spent in early childhood care. The compulsory education reform increases mothers’ completion of at least compulsory years of schooling. However, it has no significant effect on the primary components of early childhood education, namely time spent in reading to children, playing with children, and talking to children. The forth essay investigates the impact of the reform on the ethnic gap in educational and labor market outcomes between two ethnic groups in Turkey. For females, the reform widens the ethnic gap in the educational outcomes but has no impact on the ethnic gap in the labor market outcomes. On the other hand, for males, it has no impact on the ethnic disparities in the educational attainment but widens the disparities in the labor market outcomes.