Why Do Mothers Breastfeed Girls Less Than Boys? Evidence and Implications for Child Health in India

Seema Jayachandran and Ilyana Kuziemko

No 7321, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: Medical research indicates that breastfeeding suppresses post-natal fertility. We model the implications for breastfeeding decisions and test the model's predictions using survey data from India. First, we find that breastfeeding increases with birth order, since mothers near or beyond their desired total fertility are more likely to make use of the contraceptive properties of nursing. Second, given a preference for having sons, mothers with no or few sons want to conceive again and thus limit their breastfeeding. We indeed find that daughters are weaned sooner than sons, and, moreover, for both sons and daughters, having few or no older brothers results in earlier weaning. Third, these gender effects peak as mothers approach their target family size, when their decision about future childbearing (and therefore breastfeeding) is highly marginal and most sensitive to considerations such as ideal sex composition. Because breastfeeding protects against water- and food-borne disease, our model also makes predictions regarding health outcomes. We find that child-mortality patterns mirror those of breastfeeding with respect to gender and its interactions with birth order and ideal family size. Our results suggest that the gender gap in breastfeeding explains 14 percent of excess female child mortality in India, or about 22,000 "missing girls" each year.

Keywords: breastfeeding; child health; child mortality; contraception; fertility; missing women; son preference (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H0 J13 O12 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cwa and nep-dev
Date: 2009-06

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Working Paper: Why Do Mothers Breastfeed Girls Less Than Boys? Evidence and Implications for Child Health in India (2009)
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