Kinship and fertility: Brother and sibling effects on births in a patrilineal system

Wei Yang and Byron Spencer

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2022, vol. 195, issue C, 158-170

Abstract: We estimate the effect of the number and genders of the siblings of parents on their fertility decisions in a patrilineal system. For that purpose we develop a three-step approach that uses the genders of the first and second siblings to identify gender specific sibling effects while taking account of the influence of gender biased preferences and social norms. Using data from China, we find gender asymmetric sibling effects on fertility. Specifically, the number of brothers (but not siblings) of the husband has a negative effect on fertility: an additional brother is associated with 0.1 fewer own children. The evidence is consistent with a model in which the size of a kinship group reduces the strength of the motive to continue one's family lineage and hence reduces the fertility of each member household.

Keywords: Fertility; Sibling effect; Kinship; Demographic transition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268121005473
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:195:y:2022:i:c:p:158-170

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2021.12.037

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D.

More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().