The effect of school start on women's labor force participation in Norway

Abstract

In 1997 the Norwegian government implemented a large primary school reform, Reform 97, making it mandatory for all children to start school at the age of six and attend primary school for ten years. Using Norwegian registry data, I investigate the effect of the change in school starting age on mothers’ labor force participation. I estimate a difference-in-difference model which exploits differences in mothers’ exposure to the reform, using the introduction of it as a natural experiment. Only when dividing the sample into mothers with and without younger children, I found significant positive estimates and then only on mothers with younger children, indicating that these mothers worked more due to the introduction of the reform.