Parental educational investment and children's academic risk: Estimates of the impact of sibship size and birth order from exogenous variation in fertility

Dalton Conley, Rebecca Glauber

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

187 Scopus citations

Abstract

This study uses exogenous variation in sibling sex composition to estimate the casual effect of sibship size on boys' probabilities of private school attendance and grade retention. Using the 1990 U.S. Census, we find that for second-born boys, increased sibship size reduces the likelihood of private school attendance by six percentage points and increases grade retention by almost one percentage point. Sibship size has no effect for first-born boys. Instrumental variable estimates are largely consistent across racial groups, although the standard errors are larger for nonwhites as they have smaller sample sizes and this renders them insignificant at traditional alpha levels.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)722-737
Number of pages16
JournalJournal of Human Resources
Volume41
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - 2006
Externally publishedYes

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Economics and Econometrics
  • Strategy and Management
  • Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management
  • Management of Technology and Innovation

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