how does education affect family size
Overall, the results from the interaction models suggest that characteristics indicating worse access to extra-familial resources were correlated with a stronger negative causal effect of family size on education. With regard to effect size, the negative effect of having three children (the median family size in our sample) amounts to about one-tenth of a year of education, which is equivalent to the effect of about one more year of parental education (see Table4).7. Gibbs BG, Workman J, Downey DB. Quantity-quality and the one child policy: The only-child disadvantage in school enrollment in rural China. Many explanations have been offered, but the explanation termed the "confluence model" has attracted the most interest and controversy. 2016). Influence of own sibship size on the number of children desired at various times of life: The case of France. Mads Meier Jger. Acta Sociologica,51(3), 217235. the z and x vectors discussed above). that omitted aspects of family background jointly affect family size and childrens educational outcomes. Objective To determine the effect of a 3-year, monthly . Likewise, cjk captures unobserved differences between nuclear families that jointly affect family size and educational attainment in the third generation. Do birth order and family size matter for intergenerational income mobility? The extended family and childrens educational success. The decision process of parents is crucial to understand, as it underlies the fundamental challenge associated with addressing the endogeneity of family size in a model of parental investments in their children. Demography,34(3), 343354. (1995). Lindahl L. Do birth order and family size matter for intergenerational income mobility? https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-019-09543-y, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-019-09543-y. the third generation (G3) and labelled A+1,n and B+1,n, respectively (where subscript n refers to child number). The first design uses longitudinal data and fixed effects (FE) models to control for time-invariant omitted aspects of families that affect both family size and childrens educational outcomes (for example socioeconomic status, abilities, and health; Guo and VanWey 1999; Rodgers et al. Part of Springer Nature. However, in recent years the empirical credibility of existing research, as well as its conceptual adequacy, has been called into question. 6N is slightly higher in the OLS models than in the EFFE models (which we discuss next) because in the former we also include extended families with only one observation in the child generation. We begin by illustrating this design in Fig. These resources take the form of income, time, and social capital, all of which can be used to influence childrens environments (e.g. Review of Economic Studies Limited,76, 11491174. Consequently, although we cannot formally rule out that in-married spouses number of siblings might have a direct effect on childrens educational attainment, we argue that our research design makes this unlikely. Although the RDM predicts that family size will be associated with lower per capita investments, it does not include a behavioural framework for analysing how parents decide on how many children to have and how they will invest in each child. Demography,55, 17051725. Careers, Unable to load your collection due to an error. Altonji JG, Hayashi F, Kotlikoff LJ. Genetic factors may influence, for example, fecundity that is transmitted from parents to children (Kosova et al. Fertility and Sterility,96(1), 95101. Models 57 in Table3 summarise results from EFFE models in which, in addition to the main effect of family size, we also include interaction effects between family size and (1) the frequency of meetings between A and B in the past 12months, and (2) the indicator of whether A/B has received help with babysitting or childcare from the extended family, and (3) the indicator of how close A and B feel to each other. Finally, the WLS includes information on all children of A and B, i.e. Direct tests using micro data. Environmental factors include family socialisation and being exposed to a larger family (Axinn et al. Demography,18(4), 421442. Sibling additions, resource dilution, and cognitive development during early childhood. We motivate this IV by a body of research showing that fertility is positively correlated across generations (Murphy 1999) due to an intergenerational transmission of fecundity and family size preferences (Axinn et al. Lee J. Third, we present results from the EFFE-IV model in which, in addition to controlling for EFFEs, we use in-married spouses number of siblings as an IV for differences in family size within extended families. Demography,52(1), 281313. Before The table shows that although differences in means between the two samples are statistically significant for most variables (given the large sample sizes), substantive differences are very small. 2We have analysed if the variation that exists in in-married spouses number of siblings is similar across the distribution of Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) families socioeconomic characteristics (measured by A and Bs income and education). Econometrica,65(3), 557586. iStockphoto.com/Noel Hendrickson Siblings are born less often in couples where at least one parent has a low level of education than in couples where both partners have completed tertiary education. quality of housing), opportunities (e.g. (2017). (2016). Gendering family composition: Sex preferences for children and childbearing behavior in the Nordic countries. de Haan M. Birth order, family size and educational attainment. In the OLS model in which we do not include any controls, we find a negative effect of family size on educational attainment, with each additional sibling estimated to reduce educational attainment by about 0.16years of schooling (p<0.001). An economic analysis of fertility. Axinn WG, Clarkberg ME, Thornton A. 1) and a randomly selected sibling (B in Fig. Demography,31(1), 6579. Sibling size and investment in childrens education: An Asian instrument. Quantity-quality and the one child policy: The only-child disadvantage in school enrollment in rural China. 312906. Evidence from Sweden. New evidence from quasi-experimental variation in couples reproductive capacity. This paper has been presented at the 2016 RC28 Spring Meeting at the University of Bern, the 2016 Nordic Sociological Association Conference at the University of Helsinki, at the 2017 Population Association of America Conference in Chicago, and at a research seminar at Lund University. 2001) and, for these reasons, the number of siblings that in-married spouses have should be predictive of how many children they eventually have. Sex in marriage is a divine gift? A., Mansour, H., & Urza, S. (2013). We have analysed if the variation that exists in in-married spouses number of siblings is similar across the distribution of Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) families socioeconomic characteristics (measured by A and Bs income and education). The History of the Family,22(23), 157174. The EFFE design controls out the EFFE, but not the family FE, cjk. These results are consistent with the idea that more children dilute the available resources in a family (Becker 1960; Blake 1981; Gibbs et al. This literature, which we review here and on which we build, typically uses one of the two research designs: fixed effects (FE) or instrumental variables (IV). Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Black SE, Devereux PJ, Salvanes KG. This negative effect, which we interpret as the Average Treatment Effect (ATE) of family size, persists when, in addition to EFFEs, we also instrument differences in nuclear family size with differences in in-married spouses number of siblings (a proxy for their fecundity and family size preferences). Second, we find that the negative effect of family size on childrens educational outcomes is weaker in extended families in which family members meet more often and provide help with childcare. Marital fertility and size of family of orientation. The effect of family size and birth order on childrens education. In this model, 1 may be interpreted as the Average Treatment Effect (ATE), i.e. Family size is our main explanatory variable and measures the total number of children in each nuclear family AA and BB, respectively (including biological, adopted, step, and foster children). Demography,53(3), 723748. This paper has been presented at the 2016 RC28 Spring Meeting at the University of Bern, the 2016 Nordic Sociological Association Conference at the University of Helsinki, at the 2017 Population Association of America Conference in Chicago, and at a research seminar at Lund University. Examples of policy reforms include: changes in Chinas family planning policy (Argys and Averett 2015; Liu 2014; Qian 2009), municipal contraceptive bans in the Philippines (Dumas and Lefranc 2016), physical distance to family planning centres (Dang and Rogers 2016), variation in reproductive capacity as measured by, for example, (sub)fecundity (Bougma et al. Rosenzweig MR, Zhang J. Kalmijn, M., & van de Werfhorst, H. (2016). Maternal age, multiple birth, and extremely low birth weight infants. Rosenzweig, M. R., & Schultz, T. P. (1987). Together, these results suggest that resources outside the nuclear family might reduce the negative impact of resource dilution as emphasised in the CRD model. Given that most of our substantive analyses rely on variation within the extended family, the only variable in the first generation that we can (and do) use is family size. Multiple-birth risk associated with IVF and extended embryo culture: USA, 2001. Duncan OD, Freedman R, Coble JM, Slesinger DP. Our results suggest that contextual characteristics outside the nuclear family moderate the negative effect of family size on childrens educational attainment. Downey DB. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics,71(3), 399426. Black SE, Devereux PJ, Salvanes KG. 1965; Lyngstad and Prskawetz 2010; Rgnier-Loilier 2006). Moreover, the test statistic on the F-test for the excluded instrument (F=27.09) indicates that the IV is highly statistically relevant (Staiger and Stock 1997). The effect of family size on education: New evidence from Chinas one child policy (p. 9196). Jger, M. M. (2008). Journal of Marriage and Family,79, 462474. 2 since in that case the effect of family size is indistinguishable from the family FE.1 Instead, we propose to extend the EFFE design with an IV component that allows us to identify the causal effect of family size net of the family FE (under a set of assumptions which we describe below). (1994). 2016; Kalmijn and van de Werfhorst 2016; Shavit and Pierce 2001). Sex preference, fertiltiy and family planning in China. Do population control policies induce more human capital investment? 7In addition to the results reported here, we have also run the EFFE model separately for all different gender combinations of the sibling pair A and B (i.e. the average effect for complier families who respond to the treatment of having one spouse who has more siblings by having more children (Angrist and Pischke 2009; Imbens and Angrist 1994). Dumas, C., & LeFranc, A. Multiple experiments for the causal link between the quantity and quality of children. Sex in marriage is a divine gift? Reconsidering the effects of sibling configuration: recent advances and challenges. Correspondence to Previous research has addressed the negative effect of family size on outcomes such as education, IQ, grades, health, cash transfers to children, and wealth (Black et al. An official website of the United States government. We impute missing information on total family income using data on the WLS graduate and the sibling respondents personal income in 1974 and household income in 1992. Guo G, VanWey L. Sibship Size and Intellectual Development: Is the Relationship Causal? Objections can be raised against the validity of previous (and of our) research, and we address the identification challenge by combining the FE and IV designs and by proposing a new source of variation in family size, in-married spouses fecundity and family size preferences, which we argue is not directly related to childrens educational outcomes. American Economic Review,82, 11771198. Demography,51(5), 18951931. The Impacts of family size on investment in child quality. Kugler AD, Kumar S. Preference for boys, family size and educational attainment in India. Together, these factors motivate why in-married spouses number of siblings would be positively correlated with family size and why it is a candidate IV. Silles, M. (2010). 1994; Duncan et al. Applied economics,40(17), 22392257. H., & Rogers, H. (2016). It was realised that choice of family size is influenced by the socio-economic variables in the Municipality. Our results suggest that contextual characteristics outside the nuclear family moderate the negative effect of family size on childrens educational attainment. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Lyngstad, T. H., & Prskawetz, A. ), and some information on \({\text{A'}}_{ - 1}\), the only available information on \({\text{B'}}_{ - 1}\) is family size. Li H, Zhang J, Zhu Y. Axinn, W. G., Clarkberg, M. E., & Thornton, A. Does family size have a negative causal effect on childrens educational outcomes? *Difference in means between analytical and total sample is not statistically significant at p<0.05. Family size (sometimes also called sibship size) refers to the number of brothers and sisters in a given family. 2006; Arnold and Zhaoxiang 1986; Clark 2000; Freedman et al. Inspired by the CRD model, this study tests if the causal effect of family size on educational attainment depends on the strength of social ties within extended families (measured by how often family members meet, how close they feel, and whether they provide help with childcare). When bigger is not better: Family size, parental resources. Mostly harmless econometrics: An empiricists companion. We find that family size has a negative causal effect on educational attainment and, moreover, that the negative effect is smaller in families with stronger social ties. Eur J Population 36, 575600 (2020). Impact of sibship size, birth order and sex composition on school enrolment in urban Turkey. two brothers, two sisters, and one brother and one sister). Size of family and preference for children of each sex. National Library of Medicine Lyngstad TH, Prskawetz A. 2010; Bougma et al. Importance Children experiencing poverty are more likely to experience worse health outcomes during the first few years of life, including injury, chronic illness, worse nutrition, and poorer sleep. Demography,27(4), 579588. Evidence on the quantity-quality trade-off from the Manila contraceptive ban. Demographic Research,23, 587614. These results are consistent with the CRD model, claiming that investments in children from outside the nuclear family, in this case investments by members of the extended family, moderate the negative effect of coming from a large family. Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article. Birth order, family size and educational attainment. 1. Sandberg J, Rafail P. Family size, cognitive outcomes, and familial interaction in stable, two-parent families: United States, 19972002. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-019-09543-y, access via Statistically significant at p < 0.05 Medicine Lyngstad TH, Prskawetz a and being exposed to larger! The empirical credibility of existing research, as well as its conceptual adequacy, been. Risk associated with IVF and extended embryo culture: USA, 2001 desired at various of. Family moderate the negative effect of family size matter for intergenerational income mobility in!, DOI: https: //doi.org/10.1007/s10680-019-09543-y, DOI: https: //doi.org/10.1007/s10680-019-09543-y control policies induce more human capital investment investment! Captures unobserved differences between nuclear families that jointly affect family size on investment in quality.: new evidence from Chinas one child policy: the only-child disadvantage in school enrollment in China. 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Into question kugler AD, Kumar S. preference for children of each sex when bigger is not better: size! Likewise, cjk captures unobserved differences between nuclear families that jointly affect family size and educational attainment, &,! Lyngstad TH, Prskawetz a behavior in the Nordic countries Difference in means between analytical and sample. Example, fecundity that is transmitted from parents to children ( Kosova et al design out! Policy ( P. 9196 ) J, Zhu Y. Axinn, W. G., Clarkberg,,! Sibling configuration: recent advances and challenges due to an error ; Freedman et al socialisation and being to! Behavior in the Nordic countries sister ) to children ( Kosova et al discussed )..., the WLS includes information on all children of each sex Slesinger DP attainment in..