IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp6706.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Birth Order and Human Capital Development: Evidence from Ecuador

Author

Listed:
  • de Haan, Monique

    (University of Oslo)

  • Plug, Erik

    (University of Amsterdam)

  • Rosero, José

    (INEC Ecuador)

Abstract

In this paper we examine the effect of birth order on human capital development in Ecuador using a large national database together with self-collected survey data. Using family fixed effects models we find significant positive birth order effects; earlier born children stay behind in their human capital development from early childhood to adolescence. Turning to potential mechanisms we find that earlier born children receive less quality time from their mothers than later born children. In addition, they are breastfed shorter. The estimated birth order effects are largest for children in their teens growing up in poor, low educated families.

Suggested Citation

  • de Haan, Monique & Plug, Erik & Rosero, José, 2012. "Birth Order and Human Capital Development: Evidence from Ecuador," IZA Discussion Papers 6706, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6706
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp6706.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jasmin Kantarevic & Stéphane Mechoulan, 2006. "Birth Order, Educational Attainment, and Earnings: An Investigation Using the PSID," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 41(4).
    2. Alison Booth & Hiau Kee, 2009. "Birth order matters: the effect of family size and birth order on educational attainment," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 22(2), pages 367-397, April.
    3. Marco Francesconi, 2008. "Adult Outcomes for Children of Teenage Mothers," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 110(1), pages 93-117, March.
    4. Daniel I. Rees & Joseph J. Sabia, 2009. "The Effect of Breast Feeding on Educational Attainment: Evidence from Sibling Data," Journal of Human Capital, University of Chicago Press, vol. 3(1), pages 43-72.
    5. Cunha, Flavio & Heckman, James J. & Lochner, Lance, 2006. "Interpreting the Evidence on Life Cycle Skill Formation," Handbook of the Economics of Education, in: Erik Hanushek & F. Welch (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Education, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 12, pages 697-812, Elsevier.
    6. Basu, Kaushik & Van, Pham Hoang, 1998. "The Economics of Child Labor," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(3), pages 412-427, June.
    7. de Haan, Monique, 2010. "Birth order, family size and educational attainment," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 576-588, August.
    8. Silvia Helena Barcellos & Leandro S. Carvalho & Adriana Lleras-Muney, 2014. "Child Gender and Parental Investments in India: Are Boys and Girls Treated Differently?," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(1), pages 157-189, January.
    9. Senauer, Benjamin & Kassouf, Ana L, 2000. "The Effects of Breastfeeding on Health and the Demand for Medical Assistance among Children in Brazil," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 48(4), pages 719-736, July.
    10. Joseph Price, 2008. "Parent-Child Quality Time: Does Birth Order Matter?," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 43(1).
    11. Björklund, Anders & Salvanes, Kjell G., 2011. "Education and Family Background: Mechanisms and Policies," Handbook of the Economics of Education, in: Erik Hanushek & Stephen Machin & Ludger Woessmann (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Education, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 3, pages 201-247, Elsevier.
    12. Sandra E. Black & Paul J. Devereux & Kjell G. Salvanes, 2005. "The More the Merrier? The Effect of Family Size and Birth Order on Children's Education," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(2), pages 669-700.
    13. Dalton Conley & Rebecca Glauber, 2006. "Parental Educational Investment and Children’s Academic Risk: Estimates of the Impact of Sibship Size and Birth Order from Exogenous Variation in Fertility," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 41(4).
    14. Jonathan Guryan & Erik Hurst & Melissa Kearney, 2008. "Parental Education and Parental Time with Children," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 22(3), pages 23-46, Summer.
    15. Emerson, Patrick M. & Souza, André Portela, 2008. "Birth Order, Child Labor, and School Attendance in Brazil," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 36(9), pages 1647-1664, September.
    16. Michel Tenikue & Bertrand Verheyden, 2010. "Birth Order and Schooling: Theory and Evidence from Twelve Sub-Saharan Countries," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 19(4), pages 459-495, August.
    17. Gary-Bobo, Robert J. & Prieto, Ana & Picard, Natalie, 2006. "Birth Order and Sibship Sex Composition as Instruments in the Study of Education and Earnings," CEPR Discussion Papers 5514, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Andersen, Dana C. & Gunes, Pinar Mine, 2023. "Birth Order Effects in the Developed and Developing World: Evidence from International Test Scores," IZA Discussion Papers 15931, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Lucio Esposito & Sunil Mitra Kumar & Adrián Villaseñor, 2020. "The importance of being earliest: birth order and educational outcomes along the socioeconomic ladder in Mexico," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 33(3), pages 1069-1099, July.
    3. Jaqueline Oliveira, 2019. "Birth order and the gender gap in educational attainment," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 775-803, September.
    4. Fredrick M. Wamalwa & Justine Burns, 2017. "Gender and Birth Order Effects on Intra-household Schooling Choices and Education Attainments in Kenya," SALDRU Working Papers 203, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    5. Heather Congdon Fors & Annika Lindskog, 2023. "Within‐family inequalities in human capital accumulation in India," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(1), pages 3-28, February.
    6. Wanchuan Lin & Juan Pantano & Shuqiao Sun, 2020. "Birth order and unwanted fertility," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 33(2), pages 413-440, April.
    7. Kim, Jun Hyung & Wang, Shaoda, 2021. "Birth Order Effects, Parenting Style, and Son Preference," GLO Discussion Paper Series 1007, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    8. Mendolia, Silvia & Stavrunova, Olena & Vidal-Fernandez, Marian, 2024. "Birth Order Effects on Education: Insights from Low- And Middle-Income Countries," IZA Discussion Papers 17131, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    9. Handy, Christopher & Shester, Katharine, 2020. "The Effect of Birth Order on Educational Attainment among the Baby Boom Generation," MPRA Paper 102426, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Vu, Linh Hoang & Tran, Tuyen Quang, 2021. "Sibship composition, birth order and education: Evidence from Vietnam," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    11. Christopher Handy & Katharine L. Shester, 2022. "Birth order and the decline in college completion among the baby boom generation," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 60(4), pages 1626-1643, October.
    12. Maximilian Schwefer, 2018. "Birth Order Effects and Educational Achievement in the Developing World," ifo Working Paper Series 282, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.
    13. Stéphane Mechoulan & François-Charles Wolff, 2015. "Intra-household allocation of family resources and birth order: evidence from France using siblings data," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 28(4), pages 937-964, October.
    14. Zhang, Shumeng & Guo, Naijia & Zhang, Junsen, 2023. "Reexamining the effect of birth order on cognitive and non-cognitive abilities: New evidence from China," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    15. Andra Hiriscau & Mihaela Pintea, 2024. "Birth order, socioeconomic background and educational attainment," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(3), pages 395-412, May.
    16. Ronni Pavan, 2016. "On the Production of Skills and the Birth-Order Effect," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 51(3), pages 699-726.
    17. Bu, Feifei, 2014. "Sibling configurations, educational aspiration and attainment," ISER Working Paper Series 2014-11, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    18. Lao, Yehui & Dong, Zhiqiang, 2019. "The only child, birth order and educational outcomes," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 13, pages 1-24.
    19. Fujimoto, Junichi & Meng, Xiangcai, 2019. "Curse or blessing: Investigating the education and income of firstborns and only boys," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 1-1.
    20. Conzo, Pierluigi & Zotti, Roberto, 2020. "Blessed are the first: The long-term effect of birth order on trust," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 39(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Ecuador; human capital development; parental time allocation; birth order;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D1 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior
    • I2 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education
    • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6706. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.