Is There Really a Trade-Off? Family Size and Investment in Child Quality in India

Mehtabul Azam and Chan Hang Saing ()

The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 2018, vol. 18, issue 1, 12

Abstract: We address the relationship between number of children and investment in child quality, known as quantity–quality (Q–Q) trade-off, for India. Using a number of investment and outcome measures, we find that the OLS estimates suggest the presence of Q–Q trade-offs in nine out of ten measures considered. Using the gender of the first-born child as an instrument, the trade-offs in all measures disappear. Given the concerns about the exogeneity of the instrument, we apply Oster (2016) bounds to assess the sensitivity of OLS estimates to omitted variables. We find robust trade-off estimates in three measures currently enrolled in school, years of schooling and height-for-age. The results are more robust when observing trade-offs in rural areas. Trade-offs appear in ever enrolled in school, private school attendance, expenditure on education and private coaching in addition to the trade-offs in the three measures for all India sample.

Keywords: quantity–quality trade-off; investment; educational outcomes; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J13 O11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/bejeap-2017-0098 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
Working Paper: Is there really a trade-off? Family Size and Investment in Child Quality in India (2017)
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:bpj:bejeap:v:18:y:2018:i:1:p:12:n:6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/bejeap/html

DOI: 10.1515/bejeap-2017-0098

Access Statistics for this article

The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy is currently edited by Hendrik Jürges and Sandra Ludwig

More articles in The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().