Øystein Kravdal

http://www.demographic-research.org/special/3/6/

Bookmark this page
Send this article to a friend

	Click the icon to view and/or download the PDF file. Once you are in the PDF file, use your browser back button to return to this page.

Abstract
When assessing the importance of education for fertility, one should ideally use complete education histories. Unfortunately, such data are often not available. It is illustrated here, using register data for Norwegian women born in 1969, that inclusion of educational level at the latest age observed (28), rather than at the current age, can give substantially biased education effect estimates. It is also illustrated that imputation of education for earlier ages may lead to wrong conclusions. A simple imputation of educational level and enrolment based on the assumption that everyone passes through the educational system with the officially stipulated progress gives particularly misleading results. Somewhat better estimates are obtained when a slower progress more in accordance with reality is assumed, or when educational level and enrolment are imputed stochastically on the basis of distributions calculated from real data. Obviously, one should be very careful when faced with incomplete education histories, and try to make use of relevant information from other sources about the actual educational careers.

Author's affiliation
Øystein Kravdal
University of Oslo, Norway

Keywords
birth rate, education, endogenous, enrolment, fertility, imputation, incomplete histories, Norway, register data, registry files, simultaneous models

Word count (Main text)
5489

Other Articles by the same author/authors (in Demographic Research)

	[18-7] Does income inequality really influence individual mortality?: Results from a ‘fixed-effects analysis’ where constant unobserved municipality characteristics are controlled
	[17-9] Effects of current education on second- and third-birth rates among Norwegian women and men born in 1964: Substantive interpretations and methodological issues
	[16-15] Does cancer affect the divorce rate?
	[15-1] A simulation-based assessment of the bias produced when using averages from small DHS clusters as contextual variables in multilevel models
	[10-1] Educational differentials in male mortality in Russia and northern Europe: A comparison of an epidemiological cohort from Moscow and St. Petersburg with the male populations of Helsinki and Oslo
	[9-2] The problematic estimation of "imitation effects" in multilevel models
	[6-10] The impact of individual and aggregate unemployment on fertility in Norway
	[6-9] Is the Previously Reported Increase in Second- and Higher-order Birth Rates in Norway and Sweden from the mid-1970s Real or a Result of Inadequate Estimation Methods?
	[5-6] The High Fertility of College Educated Women in Norway: An Artefact of the Separate Modelling of Each Parity Transition
	[3-3] A search for aggregate-level effects of education on fertility, using data from Zimbabwe

Most recent Similar Articles (in Demographic Research)

	[19-31] Biological and sociological interpretations of age-adjustment in studies of higher order birth rates (fertility, education)
	[18-5] Fertility trends by social status (fertility, education)
	[17-9] Effects of current education on second- and third-birth rates among Norwegian women and men born in 1964: Substantive interpretations and methodological issues (fertility, education)
	[17-8] Education and second birth rates in Denmark 1981-1994 (education, birth rate)
	[14-16] Educational attainment and ultimate fertility among Swedish women born in 1955-59 (fertility, education)