Preference for Boys, Family Size, and Educational Attainment in India
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Abstract:
Using data from nationally representative household surveys, we test whether Indian parents make trade-offs between the number of children and investments in education. To address the endogeneity due to the joint determination of quantity and quality of children, we instrument family size with the gender of the first child, which is plausibly random. Given a strong son preference in India, parents tend to have more children if the firstborn is a girl. Our instrumental variable results show that children from larger families have lower educational attainment and are less likely to be enrolled in school, with larger effects for rural, poorer, and low-caste families as well as for families with illiterate mothers.Keywords:
Firstborn
Endogeneity
Caste
Instrumental variable
Educational Attainment
Girl
Using data from nationally representative household surveys, we test whether Indian parents make trade-offs between the number of children and investments in education. To address the endogeneity due to the joint determination of quantity and quality of children, we instrument family size with the gender of the first child, which is plausibly random. Given a strong son preference in India, parents tend to have more children if the firstborn is a girl. Our instrumental variable results show that children from larger families have lower educational attainment and are less likely to be enrolled in school, with larger effects for rural, poorer, and low-caste families as well as for families with illiterate mothers.
Firstborn
Endogeneity
Caste
Instrumental variable
Educational Attainment
Girl
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Using data from nationally representative household surveys, we test whether Indian parents make trade-offs between the number of children and investments in education and health of their children. To address the endogeneity due to the joint determination of quantity and quality of children by parents, we instrument family size with the gender of the first child which is plausibly random. Given a strong son-preference in India, parents tend to have more children if the first born is a girl. Our IV results show that children from larger families have lower educational attainment and are less likely to have ever been enrolled and to be currently enrolled in school, even after controlling for parents’ characteristics and birth-order of children. The effects are larger for rural, poorer and low-caste families and for families with less educated mothers. On the other hand, we find no evidence of a trade-off for health outcomes.
Endogeneity
Caste
Educational Attainment
Girl
Instrumental variable
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Using data from a representative sample from India, we test the empirical validity of Quantity-Quality tarde-off model of Becker and Lewis (1973). To address the endogeneity arising from the joint determination of quantity and quality of children by parents, we instrument the family size by sex of the first child. We find a negative relationship between family size and children's educational attainment, even after controlling for parent's characteristics and birth order of children. The effects are heterogeneous. The trade-o is more pronounced in rural areas, for low-caste children, for illiterate mothers, and for children belonging to low wealth category. Overall, the findings support the quantity-quality trade-o in a resource poor setting such as India. Given that for long-run economic development, the quality of human capital is equally important, policymakers should invest more in education and other welfare programs in order to mitigate the adverse impacts of the trade-off.
Endogeneity
Caste
Educational Attainment
Instrumental variable
Sample (material)
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Firstborn
Psychological control
Parenting styles
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Complementarity (molecular biology)
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Using data from a representative sample from India, we test the empirical validity of Quantity Quality trade-off model of Becker and Lewis (1973). To address the endogeneity arising from the joint determination of quantity and quality of children by parents, we instrument the family size by sex of the first child. We find a negative relationship between family size and children's educational attainment, even after controlling for parent's characteristics and birth order of children. The effects are heterogeneous. The trade-off is more pronounced in rural areas, for low-caste children, for illiterate mothers, and for children belonging to low wealth category. Overall, the findings support the quantity-quality trade-off in a resource poor country such as India. Given that for long-run economic development, the quality of human capital is equally important, policymakers should invest more in education and other welfare programs in order to mitigate the adverse impacts of larger family size.
Endogeneity
Educational Attainment
Instrumental variable
Caste
Sample (material)
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Citations (3)
We examine a potential intergenerational determinant of child labor by investigating the effect of maternal education on children0s educational and labor outcomes. To account for endogeneity of mother's education, we use the Nepal Education System Plan (NESP) (1971), one of the first education reforms in the country, as an exogenous source of variation. We find that NESP increased educational outcomes among females that were most likely affected by the reform due to their birth year and district of birth. Furthermore, an increase in mother's highest level of schooling increases a child's probability of finishing 5th grade only among mothers from a higher caste households. We find modest effects of mother's education on child labor outcomes, with the IV estimate indicating that a year increase in mother's education reduces a child's weekly work by approximately an hour. The IV estimates are about two-fold larger than the OLS estimates in most cases. We caution that exclusion based on social hierarchy should be considered when promoting maternal education as a medium to improve children's well-being in developing nations like Nepal.
Endogeneity
Caste
Instrumental variable
Educational Attainment
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Using data from nationally representative household surveys, we test whether Indian parents make trade-offs between the number of children and investments in education and health of their children.To address the endogeneity due to the joint determination of quantity and quality of children by parents, we instrument family size with the gender of the first child which is plausibly random.Given a strong son-preference in India, parents tend to have more children if the first born is a girl.Our IV results show that children from larger families have lower educational attainment and are less likely to have ever been enrolled and to be currently enrolled in school, even after controlling for parents' characteristics and birth-order of children.The effects are larger for rural, poorer and low-caste families and for families with less educated mothers.However, we find no evidence of a trade-off for health outcomes.
Educational Attainment
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Citations (9)
Using data from a representative sample from India, we test the empirical validity of Quantity-Quality
tarde-off model of Becker and Lewis (1973). To address the endogeneity arising from the joint determination of quantity and quality of children by parents, we instrument the family size by sex of the
first child. We find a negative relationship between family size and children's educational attainment,
even after controlling for parent's characteristics and birth order of children. The effects are heterogeneous. The trade-o is more pronounced in rural areas, for low-caste children, for illiterate mothers,
and for children belonging to low wealth category. Overall, the findings support the quantity-quality
trade-o in a resource poor setting such as India. Given that for long-run economic development,
the quality of human capital is equally important, policymakers should invest more in education and
other welfare programs in order to mitigate the adverse impacts of the trade-off.
Endogeneity
Educational Attainment
Caste
Instrumental variable
Sample (material)
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Citations (3)
The birth order literature emphasizes the role of parental investments in explaining why firstborns have higher human capital outcomes than their laterborn siblings. We use birth order as a proxy for investments and interact it with genetic endowments. Exploiting only within-family variation in both ensures they are exogenous as well as orthogonal to each other. As such, our setting is informative about the existence of dynamic complementarity in skill production. Our empirical analysis exploits data from 15,019 full siblings in the UK Biobank. We adopt a family-fixed effects strategy combined with instrumental variables to deal with endogeneity issues arising from omitted variables and measurement error. We find that birth order and genetic endowments interact: those with above-average genetic endowments benefit disproportionally more from being firstborn compared to those with below-average genetic endowments. This finding is a clean example of how genetic endowments (nature) and the environment (nurture) interact in producing educational attainment. Moreover, our results are consistent with the existence of dynamic complementarity in skill formation: additional parental investments associated with being firstborn are more effective for those siblings who randomly inherited higher genetic endowments for educational attainment.
Firstborn
Complementarity (molecular biology)
Endogeneity
Nature versus nurture
Educational Attainment
Instrumental variable
Bequest
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