Female Babies and Risk-Aversion

Ganna Pogrebna (), Andrew Oswald and David Haig ()
Additional contact information
Ganna Pogrebna: University of Warwick
David Haig: Harvard University

No 10717, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Being told the sex of your unborn child is a major exogenous 'shock'. In the first study of its kind, we collect before-and-after data from hospital wards. We test for the causal effects of learning child gender upon people's degree of risk-aversion. Using a standard Holt-Laury criterion, the parents of daughters, whether unborn or recently born, are shown to be almost twice as risk-averse as parents of sons. The study demonstrates this in longitudinal ('switching') data and cross-sectional data. The study finds it for fathers and mothers, babies in the womb and recently born children, and for a West European nation and an East European nation.

Keywords: Trivers-Willard hypothesis; child gender; daughters; risk attitudes; pregnancy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C90 C93 D81 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2017-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur
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Published - published in: Journal of Health Economics, 2018, 58, 10 - 17

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