The Effect of Sibling Size on Children’s Health and Education: Is there a Quantity-Quality Trade-off?

Hai Zhong

Journal of Development Studies, 2017, vol. 53, issue 8, 1194-1206

Abstract: The quantity-quality trade-off is one important motivation for the family planning policies in many developing countries. In this paper, we examine the effect of number of siblings on children’s health and education in China. We find evidence of quantity-quality trade-off in children’s health but not in children’s education. Our study has three contributions. First, we focus not only on children’s education but also on children’s health, which has received rather little attention in the literature. Secondly, we use a new source of exogenous variation in fertility – variations of the strictness of the One-Child policy across localities in China – to construct instrumental variable's (IV's). Finally, we empirically explore the underlying mechanism of the quantity-quality trade-off, and find supporting evidence for the resource dilution hypothesis.

Date: 2017
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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DOI: 10.1080/00220388.2016.1214720

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