The Effect of Sibship Size on Children’s Outcomes: Evidence from Vietnam

Are children an incentive or a disincentive for migration? Evidence from Vietnam

“…In summary, the direction of the effect of number of children on migration for either the whole family or individual parents is ambiguous. Although there are many empirical studies on the trade-off between quantity and quality of children (see the review from Mont, Nguyen, & Tran, 2019), for example and the effect of children on parental employment (see reviews from Akgunduz & Plantenga, 2018), and Blau & Currie, 2006 , there is little empirical evidence on the effect of children on migration. Moreover, the limited empirical evidence that exists offers only mixed conclusions.…”

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

“…These are clearly not valid instruments because the chance of a twin birth increases with the number of births. The positive association between this IV and the realized number of children will also make it positively associated with the desired number of children and, therefore, with other important confounding factors.For the same reason, versions of this specification, such as any twin birth as a second or subsequent birth(Frenette 2011a, b) or any twin birth among younger siblings(Dasgupta and Solomon 2018;Fletcher and Kim 2019;Mont et al 2020), will also not be valid. Defining the IV as an indicator for a twin birth in the first two parities (as used in Moschion 2010; Chen 2017) does not produce an interpretable effect and is therefore also invalid.…”