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Economics Research Seminar Series: “The Women Empowering Effect of Higher Education”
Details
This seminar will be held at Abdul Latif Jameel Building – Room 1055 and virtually over Zoom.
Exploiting a staggered rollout of construction of public universities across Egypt in the 1960s-70s, we use event-study and difference-difference techniques to show that opening a new university in an individual’s province significantly increased the likelihood of the opening of a new university of obtaining a higher education degree and improved labor market and marriage outcomes. This impact is almost entirely driven by women who, as an outcome of the higher education expansion policy, became more likely to join the labor market in paid, higher-quality jobs and experienced improvements in marriage quality, as measured by better assortative mating higher intra-household bargaining power. While overall fertility does not seem to be affected, there is some evidence of delay in fertility, driven by shifting the age of marriage. We further exploit variations in the timing of constructing different departments within universities to estimate the role of various fields of study. We provide evidence that STEM fields, compared to other areas of specialization, are associated with better outcomes in the labor market. The findings are robust to a battery of different sensitivity checks.