Differential Fecundity and Gender Biased Parental Investment

Aloysius Siow () and Xiaodong Zhu

Working Papers from University of Toronto, Department of Economics

Abstract: Parents invest differently in sons and daughters. This paper formally re-examines the application of the Trivers Willard hypothesis to humans. Differential fecundity and assortive matching in marriage are necessary for parents to invest differently in the skills of their sons and daughters. Unlike the Trivers Willard hypothesis, better endowed parents do not necessarily invest relatively more on the survival of their sons relative to worse endowed parents. Parents invest more on the health of the child that they value higher. They do not necessarily invest more on the skills of the child that they value higher. The theory generates endogenous population growth.

JEL-codes: J1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 44 pages
Date: 1998-06-24
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tor:tecipa:siow-99-03

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