 Big SistersPamela Jakiela, Owen Ozier, Lia C. Fernald and Heather Ashley Knauer No 9454, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank Abstract: This paper models household investments in young children when parents and oldersiblings share caregiving responsibilities and when investments by older siblings contribute to youngchildren's human capital accumulation. To test the predictions of the model, the paper estimates the impact ofhaving one older sister (as opposed to one older brother) on early childhood development in a sample of rural Kenyanhouseholds with otherwise similar family structures. Older sibling gender is not related to household structure,subsequent birth spacing, or other observable characteristics, so the presence of an older girl (asopposed to an older boy) is treated as plausibly exogenous. Having an older sister rather than an older brother improvesyounger siblings' vocabulary and fine motor skills by more than 0.1 standard deviations. Viewed through the lensof the model, the empirical pattern shown here suggests that: (i) older siblings' investments in young childrencontribute to their human capital accumulation, and (ii) households perceive lower returns to investing in oldergirls than in older boys. Keywords: Gender and Development; Social Protections & Assistance; Early Child and Children's Health; Nutrition; Early Childhood Development; Reproductive Health; Inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:9454 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC. |
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