Educated to be interested in science? Evidence from a change in compulsory schooling in Turkey

The increase in the length of compulsory schooling from five to eight years in 1997 in Turkey allows for the analysis of the causal relationship between education and interest in science in a fuzzy regression discontinuity design. I employ the two-stage least squares method in this research design, using the 2009-2021 data from the Life Satisfaction Survey. The findings imply a positive relationship between the level of education and the probability of being interested in science for women but not for men. The fact that the number of talented and motivated women who can benefit from the education reform may be greater than that of men and that women exposed to the reform have relatively higher levels of education may lead to gender differences in the estimated effect of education.