Gender Composition of Children and Sanitation Behavior In India

Deepak Saraswat ()

No 2018-12, Working papers from University of Connecticut, Department of Economics

Abstract: Open Defecation has been linked to various public health issues and has gained significant policy attention. Investing in adoption of better sanitation has also been advocated on the grounds of providing women with privacy and protection from po-tential harassment. Nonetheless, previous research has shown that due to son-biased preferences, households in India under-invest in outcomes for their female children. I use the gender of the first-born child as an indicator of the presence of adult female children in households and find that, in certain cases, households reduce open defeca-tion if the first-born child is a girl. The findings in this paper provide a new first stage association between gender composition of children and sanitation behavior and also contribute to the economic literature on decision making in households belonging to developing countries.

Keywords: Sanitation; Open Defecation; Gender Composition of Children; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J18 O10 O18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 58 pages
Date: 2018-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-gen
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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