Intergenerational Effects of Türkiye’s Education Reform on Children’s Academic and Health Outcomes

This paper examines the intergenerational effects of Türkiye’s 1997 compulsory schooling reform, which increased mandatory schooling from five to eight years. Drawing on a novel dataset from the nationally representative 2022 Turkish Child Survey, we use a regression discontinuity design (RDD) to identify the effect of mothers’ exposure to the education reform. We find that the reform significantly increased maternal educational attainment and, in turn, improved children’s performance in Turkish, while having no statistically significant effect on mathematics achievement. Maternal exposure to the reform also had positive effects on children’s mental health, increasing happiness and reducing anxiety, but did not affect their general health status. These effects are heterogeneous by child gender, with boys benefiting more than girls. Analysis of potential channels shows that increased parental investment may be one relevant channel explaining the observed effects, while reduced child work appears to play a limited role.