Strategic parenting, birth order, and school performance

V. Joseph Hotz and Juan Pantano

Journal of Population Economics, 2015, vol. 28, issue 4, 936 pages

Abstract: Fueled by new evidence, there has been renewed interest about the effects of birth order on human capital accumulation. The underlying causal mechanisms for such effects remain unsettled. We consider a model in which parents impose more stringent disciplinary environments in response to their earlier-born children’s poor performance in school in order to deter such outcomes for their later-born offspring. We provide robust empirical evidence that school performance of children in the National Longitudinal Study Children (NLSY-C) declines with birth order as does the stringency of their parents’ disciplinary restrictions. When asked how they will respond if a child brought home bad grades, parents state that they would be less likely to punish their later-born children. Taken together, these patterns are consistent with a reputation model of strategic parenting. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015

Keywords: Birth order; School performance; Grades; Parenting; Parental rules; I20; J10; J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (72)

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Working Paper: Strategic Parenting, Birth Order and School Performance (2013)
Working Paper: Strategic Parenting, Birth Order and School Performance (2013)
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DOI: 10.1007/s00148-015-0542-3

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