Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

This study investigates the impact of a massive and unexpected expansion of opportunities to attend college known as the graduation quota program on women’s fertility-related outcomes (ever married or not, number of children, two children or not, three children or not) in South Korea. A 1979 military coup in South Korea mandated that all public and private colleges expand their college admission quotas by thirty percent in 1981 and fifty percent in 1982. These mandatory expansions lasted until 1985. The mandatory increases in these quotas happened quickly in a short timeframe under the authoritarian regime. Using the Korean Longitudinal Survey of Women and Families (KLoWF), this study examines women’s fertility-related outcomes of birth cohorts of South Korean women who pre-dated the graduation quota program and compares them to birth cohorts of women who were directly impacted by the program. Specifically, our analysis uses the birth cohorts that were exposed to this abrupt, exogenous policy change as an instrumental variable to identify the longer-term effects of college education on women’s fertility-related outcomes. It is found that the college enrollment expansion caused those women who were induced to attend to college by the graduation quota program to have fewer children. It is also shown that this causal impact is partly explained by the path that such women were less likely to ever get married. Our findings provide direct relevance for other developing countries that exert substantial control over their systems of higher education and their fertility policy.