A growing proportion of the young adult population are attending and graduating from college, and post-baccalaureate schooling has become more common--and more often a career prerequisite--for both sexes. The increased prevalence of advanced education is especially dramatic for women. Research has linked this increase to recent delays in marriage and childbearing, although the exact causal processes are not clear. But because most analyses have focused on early marriage or childbearing and dropouts, or have examine only years of schooling completed, we know very little about how decisions to attend college or graduate school affect family formation, or how family formation affects decisions to attend or complete advanced education. The proposed research is designed to sharpen our understanding of the processes that affect these key life decisions. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of the Class of 1972 and from the Graduate Management Admission Council's New Matriculants Study, we propose to: (1) Determine how the enrollment of young men and women in college and graduate school affects their family formation, including (a) whether they marry and the age at which they do so; (b) whether and at what age they have children. (2) Determine how marriage and fertility affect college and graduate school enrollment and degree completion. In both cases, we will estimate models that allow education to affect family formation, and family formation to affect education. (3) Determine how psychological factors, such as young adults' values, expectations, preferences and plans for schooling, affect their attitudes about family formation; and how attitudes about family formation may, in turn, affect the psychological factors. We will examine how these relationships change over time, and how they respond to enrollment and the occurrence of marriage or a birth. (4) Determine the effects of key characteristics of higher education on the school-family formation relationship. These include part-time vs. full-time enrollment, the competitiveness of the college attended, field of study, and living arrangements at school.
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