The casual effect of fertility: The multiple problems with instrumental variables for the number of children in families

Stefan Öberg

No peuvz, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: Studies investigating how the number of children in a family affects the parents or the children face problems because the variable of interest is endogenous in the model. The currently accepted solution to this problem is to use instrumental variables (IVs), for example, based on twin births. In this paper, I review and add to the critique of IVs based on twin births and show that that there are so many issues—major and minor—with these IVs that results based on them are not reliable or interpretable. I also review other IVs used in the literature, for example IVs based on the sexes of the firstborn children, and conclude that there are, as of yet, no credible IVs for the number of children. We need to disregard results from studies applying these IVs, reevaluate the current state of knowledge, and develop new, more credible methods.

Date: 2021-09-14
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem and nep-isf
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://osf.io/download/6141a466a4364701f0fe36e2/

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:osf:socarx:peuvz

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/peuvz

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SocArXiv from Center for Open Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by OSF ().