The Causal Effect of Educational Attainment on Completed Fertility for a Cohort of Danish Women—Does Feedback Play a Role?

This study focuses on the causal effect of educational attainment on completed fertility for a cohort of Danish women born in 1963. The relationship between education and completed fertility (here defined as the number of children at age 41) is the result of a dynamic interplay between the two processes; in particular, educational attainment at a given time might be influenced by previous fertility. This notion is referred to as feedback from the fertility process to the education process. In this study population, feedback turns out to be present, and marginal structural models are used to construct a hypothetical population in which the feedback mechanisms are lifted out of the data. This gives rise to the conclusion that educational differences in completed fertility are to some degree attributable to feedback mechanisms and that they become smaller or are even reversed when this is taken into account. The study is based on data from individual-level, administrative registers.