Endowments at Birth and Parents’ Investments in Children

Adhvaryu, Achyuta; Nyshadham, Anant

doi:10.1111/ecoj.12202

Cited by 35 publications

(41 citation statements)

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“…This paper also relates to the literature that found evidence of peer effects in weight (Yakusheva, Kapinos, & Eisenberg, 2014) and in fitness (Carrell, Hoekstra, & West, 2011) among a different set of peers-fellow college students. This paper also contributes to the broader literature on sibling spillovers in health and health-care utilization, for example, Altonji, Cattan, andWare (2017), Breining, Daysal, Simonsen, andTrandafir (2015), Adhvaryu andNyshadham (2016), andHo (2017).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 87%

“…These have been interpreted as "high" levels of homophily among siblings in health behaviors (Daw, Margolis, & Verdery, 2015). In addition, numerous studies have examined potential spillovers across siblings related to substance use (Altonji, Cattan, & Ware, 2017), birth weight (Breining, Daysal, Simonsen, & Trandafir, 2015), iodine supplementation (Adhvaryu & Nyshadham, 2016), and illness symptoms (Ho, 2017). 2 1 BMI is calculated as weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Testing for family influences on obesity: The role of genetic nurture

et al. 2019

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A large literature has documented strong positive correlations among siblings in health, including body mass index (BMI) and obesity. This paper tests whether that is explained by a specific type of peer effect in obesity: genetic nurture. Specifically, we test whether an individual's weight is affected by the genes of their sibling, controlling for the individual's own genes. Using genetic data in Add Health, we find no credible evidence that an individual's BMI is affected by the polygenic risk score for BMI of their full sibling when controlling for the individual's own polygenic risk score for BMI. Thus, we find no evidence that the positive correlations in BMI between siblings are attributable to genetic nurture within families.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 87%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Testing for family influences on obesity: The role of genetic nurture

et al. 2019

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“…Finally, there may be differential investment behaviour by parents (Almond & Mazumder, 2013;Adhvaryu & Nyshadham, 2014). For example, the less well-off twin (in terms of lower birth weight) may be provided with more health care.…”

Section: What Can We Learn From Twin Studies?mentioning

confidence: 99%

How much does birth weight matter for child health in developing countries? Estimates from siblings and twins

McGovern

2018

Health Economics

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About 200 million children globally are not meeting their growth potential, and as a result will suffer the consequences in terms of future outcomes. I examine the effects of birth weight on child health and growth using information from 66 countries. I account for missing data and measurement error using instrumental variables and adopt an identification strategy based on siblings and twins. I find a consistent effect of birth weight on mortality risk, stunting, wasting, and coughing, with some evidence for fever, diarrhoea, and anaemia. Bounds analysis indicates that coefficients may be substantially underestimated due to mortality selection. Improving the pre‐natal environment is likely to be important for helping children reach their full potential.

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“…Leight (2017) uses grain yields as a plausible instrument for differences in ability proxied by height-for-age. There is an extremely careful literature that has analysed whether parents compensate or reinforce specific (plausibly exogenous) policies and events experienced in childhood (Halla et al 2014;Adhvaryu and Nyshadham 2016), which is highly informative, but may only be generalisable to larger policy shocks, whereas our use of variation in rainfall could be seen as 'normal' shocks to childhood experienced by children in low-income countries (Maccini and Yang 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reinforcement or compensation? Parental responses to children’s revealed human capital levels

Wei

Porter

2019

J Popul Econ

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A small but increasing body of literature finds that parents invest in their children unequally. However, the evidence is contradictory, and providing convincing causal evidence of the effect of child ability on parental investment in a low-income context is challenging. This paper examines how parents respond to the differing abilities of primary school-aged Ethiopian siblings, using rainfall shocks during the critical developmental period between pregnancy and the first 3 years of a child's life to isolate exogenous variations in child ability within the household, observed at a later stage than birth. The results show that on average parents attempt to compensate disadvantaged children through increased cognitive investment. The effect is significant, but small in magnitude: parents provide about 3.9% of a standard deviation more in educational fees to the lower-ability child in the observed pair. We provide suggestive evidence that families with educated mothers, smaller household size and higher wealth compensate with greater cognitive resources for a lower-ability child. Keywords Children • Human capital formation • Parental investment • Intrahousehold resource allocation JEL Classification D13 • J1 Responsible editor: Junsen Zhang The data are from Young Lives, a 15-year study of the changing nature of childhood poverty in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam (www.younglives.org.uk). Young Lives was core funded by UK aid from the Department for International Development (DFID) from 2001-2018.

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Endowments at Birth and Parents’ Investments in Children

Cited by 35 publications

References 0 publications

Testing for family influences on obesity: The role of genetic nurture

Testing for family influences on obesity: The role of genetic nurture

How much does birth weight matter for child health in developing countries? Estimates from siblings and twins

Reinforcement or compensation? Parental responses to children’s revealed human capital levels

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