%0 Journal Article %T Does the Month of Birth Influence the Timing of Life Course Decisions? Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Italy %A Laura Cavalli %J Open Journal of Social Sciences %P 101-118 %@ 2327-5960 %D 2014 %I Scientific Research Publishing %R 10.4236/jss.2014.21011 %X Social scientists have observed for a long time a negative relationship between the time spent on education and the timing of family formation. Using data from the I.D.E.A. survey (2003), a birth-month experiment on a sample of 3000 young Italian adults is employed in order to explore whether a different month of birth leads to regular differences in life course decisions of young Italians. The results suggest that the ˇ°socialˇ± age, as determined by the school cohort, rather than the biological age, is an important determinant of the timing of demographic events during the transition to adulthood. %K Education %K Marriage %K First Birth %K Natural Experiment %K Kaplan-Meier Estimate %K Cox Hazard Model %K Logit Regression Model %U http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=41746