Birth Spacing Effect on Children's Attainments: Indentification Using Instrument Variables

• Main Author: XIE, Jing
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2008
• Subjects: birth order; children; educational attainment; family structure; human capital; Behavioral Economics; Education
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/etd_coll/7; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&context=etd_coll
• Institution: Singapore Management University

In this study, I address the relationship between an often overlooked dimension of family structure--the spacing between children's births--and the degree of children's attainments such as Mathematics, Reading Cognition and Reading Comprehension. Comparing to the results of OLS estimation, 2SLS Estimation using Twin and Catholic as Instrument Variables shows less significant effects on children's attainments. Hausman Test shows that OLS estimators are not consistent with 2SLS estimators, which means there is endogenous problem in OLS estimation. As the result in 2SLS shows the different spacing effects in different spacing groups, it is possible to use nonlinear estimation (quadratic form of birth spacing) and semi-parametric estimation to draw the curve of birth spacing effects, and find the most efficient birth spacing, golden birth spacing. These two estimations, to a large extent, match each other in the range of golden birth spacing.