EDUCATION, BIRTH ORDER AND FAMILY SIZE

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Bagger, Jesper; Birchenall, Javier A.; Mansour, Hani; Urzua, Sergio
• 署名单位: University of London; Royal Holloway University London; Aarhus University; University of California System; University of California Santa Barbara; University of Colorado System; University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus; Children's Hospital Colorado; University of Colorado Denver; University System of Maryland; University of Maryland College Park; National Bureau of Economic Research
• 刊物名称: ECONOMIC JOURNAL
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0013-0133
• DOI: 10.1093/ej/ueaa089
• 发表日期: 2021
• 页码: 33-69
• 关键词: quality trade-off; fertility choice; quantity; twins; population; MODEL

摘要

This article introduces a framework to study parental investments in the presence of birth order preferences and/or human capital cost differentials across children. The framework yields canonical models as special cases and delivers sharp testable predictions concerning how parental investments respond to an exogenous change in family size in the presence of birth order effects. These predictions characterize a generalised quantity-quality trade-off. Danish administrative data confirm our theory's predictions. We find that for any given parity, the human capital profile of children in smaller families dominates that of large families, and that the average child's education decreases as family size increases, even after taking birth order effects into consideration.