The Importance of Being Wanted

Quy-Toan Do and Tung Phung

Working Papers from eSocialSciences

Abstract: We identify birth wantedness as a source of better child outcomes. In Vietnam, the year of birth is widely believed to determine success. As a result, cohorts born in auspicious years are 12 percent larger. Comparing siblings with one another, those of auspicious cohorts are found to have 2 extra months of schooling. The Vietnamese horoscope being gender-specific, this difference will be shown to be driven by birth planning; children born in auspicious years are more likely to have been planned, thus benefitting from a more favorable growth environment. [BREAD Working Paper No. 225]

Keywords: vietnam; gender-specific; cohorts; birth; auspicious; marriage; american; women; pregnancy; family; Vietnamese; fertility; crime; socioeconomic; health; height; age; parents; sex; Astrology; census; growth; environment; children; child; birth; planning; childwantedness; schooling; horoscope; superstition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-06
Note: Institutional Papers
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.esocialsciences.org/Download/repecDownl ... &AId=2515&fref=repec

Related works:
Journal Article: The Importance of Being Wanted (2010)
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:ess:wpaper:id:2515

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from eSocialSciences
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Padma Prakash ().