The Trade-Off between Child Quantity and Quality

Eric A Hanushek

Journal of Political Economy, 1992, vol. 100, issue 1, 84-117

Abstract: An empirical investigation of trade-offs between number of children and their scholastic performance confirms that family size directly affects children's achievement. Though parents show no favoritism to first-born children, being early in the birth order implies a distinct advantage, entirely because of the higher probability of being in a small family. Recent large changes in family size explain a portion of aggregate test score declines, but increased divorce rates and market work by mothers have no apparent impact. Finally, teachers are shown to differ enormously, even though performance differences are poorly captured by commonly measured teacher characteristics. Copyright 1992 by University of Chicago Press.

Date: 1992
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (385)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/261808 full text (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. See http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JPE for details.

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:ucp:jpolec:v:100:y:1992:i:1:p:84-117

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Political Economy from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().