ABSTRACT
The past 50 years have seen substantial growth in educational attainment and dramatic changes in family structure across developed countries. This chapter explores how these two phenomena are interrelated. It begins by revealing cross-country variation in how marital status and childbearing have changed over time for different education groups. In particular, while divorce is more common among lower educated groups across countries, patterns in marriage and unmarried cohabitation vary substantially. Examination of the theoretical and empirical literature reveals that the causal effect of education on the family is context-dependent. For example, more years of education lead to a reduction in fertility in the USA and the United Kingdom, but not in continental Europe. The chapter concludes by identifying a further empirical regularity in the relationship between education and marital status in the USA: divorced women are more likely to be engaged in study across the lifecycle than their married counterparts, and both men and women are most likely to be studying if they have divorced in the past year. The evidence presented shows the importance of looking beyond marital stability as a non-pecuniary benefit of education to understand more fully the complex interrelationships between education and family formation.
