The Changing Impact of Family Size on Adolescents’ Schooling: Assessing the Exogenous Variation in Fertility Using Twins in Brazil

Abstract

Researchers have long been interested in the influence of family size on children’s educational outcomes. Simply put, theories have suggested that resources are diluted within families that have more children. Although the empirical literature on developed countries has generally confirmed the theoretical prediction that family size is negatively related to children’s education, studies focusing on developing societies have reported heterogeneity in this association. Recent studies addressing the endogeneity between family size and children’s education have also cast doubt on the homogeneity of the negative role of family size on children’s education. The goal of this study is to examine the causal effect of family size on children’s education in Brazil over a 30-year period marked by important social and demographic change, and across extremely different regions within the country. We implement a twin birth instrumental variable approach to the nationally representative 1977–2009 PNAD data. Our results suggest an effect of family size on education that is not uniform throughout a period of significant social, economic, and demographic change. Rather, the causal effect of family size on adolescents’ schooling resembles a gradient that ranges from positive to no effect, trending to negative.

Can resource dilution explain differences in height by birth order and family size? A study of 389,287 male recruits in twentieth-century Netherlands

“…It is difficult to quantify the contribution of any factor in isolation. Attempts have been made however using the instrumental variable (IV) approach to estimate family size effects using singleton vs twin births and family composition effects using the sex composition of older siblings (Marteleto & de Souza, 2012; Millimet & Wang, 2011). …”

Maternal age at first birth and adolescent education in Brazil

“…In addition, extended family arrangements are common in many parts of Brazil, and remain based on principles of intergenerational obligations in that parents continue to provide the social and economic conditions for adult children and grandchildren in exchange for old-age security. As a result the extended family may mitigate the negative consequences of early childbearing, as co-residence with the extended family, grandparents in particular, and with fathers, may benefit children of young mothers in several ways (Marteleto and Souza 2012). …”

Effects of the Number and Age of Siblings on Educational Transitions in Sub‐Saharan Africa

“…Variations across social settings in the effect of number of siblings are also probable, depending, for example, on differences in ideas concerning children's work as an alternative to schooling, the cost of tuition, the economic resources of the family, and the extent to which a Studies in Family Planning 44 (3) September 2013 broader kin network can be relied upon for support (Knodel and Wongsith 1991;Parish and Willis 1993;Anh et al 1998;Eloundou-Enyegue and Williams 2006;Li, Zhang, and Zhu 2008;Maralani 2008;Schmeer 2009; Eloundou-Enyegue and Giroux 2012; Longwe and Smits 2012; Marteleto and de Souza 2012). Addressing such variations is beyond the scope of this analysis.…”

“…Although effects of the presence and age of siblings at the time of a particular transition are likely to be meaningful, additional effects of time-invariant sibsize measures may exist, and any time-invariant effects would be absorbed into the fixed effect. Some researchers have found that the use of one of these relatively advanced techniques does not change their conclusions appreciably (Eloundou-Enyegue and Williams 2006;Maralani 2008), whereas others have drawn the opposite conclusion (Black, Devereux, and Salvanes 2005;Cáceres-Delpiano 2006;Lee 2008;Angrist, Lavy, and Schlosser 2010;Åslund and Grönqvist 2010;de Haan 2010;Marteleto and de Souza 2012).…”

“…For this reason, instrumental variable and fixed effects approaches have been used to control more rigorously for sources of bias linked to differential selection into larger and smaller families. Multiple births (Black, Devereux, and Salvanes 2005;Cáceres-Delpiano 2006;Li, Zhang, and Zhu 2008;de Haan 2010;Marteleto and de Souza 2012;Ponczek and Souza 2012), the sex composition of older siblings (Goux and Maurin 2005;Conley and Glaber 2006;Lee 2008;Angrist, Lavy, and Schlosser 2010;de Haan 2010), miscarriages (Maralani 2008), the introduction of the one-child policy in China (Qian 2009), and parents' number of siblings (Jaeger 2008) have been used as instrumental variables. Although a case can be made to justify the use of each of these measures, they all have limitations (see Rosenzweig and Zhang 2009 for a critique of twinning, and Åslund and Grönqvist 2010 for a critique of sex composition).…”