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Parental Investment After the Birth of a Sibling: The Effect of Family Size in Low-Fertility China

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Demography

Abstract

A large body of research has examined the relationship between family size and child well-being in developing countries, but most of this literature has focused on the consequences of high fertility. The impact of family size in a low-fertility developing country context remains unknown, even though more developing countries are expected to reach below-replacement fertility levels. Set in China between 2010 and 2016, this study examines whether an increase in family size reduces parental investment received by the firstborn child. Using data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), this study improves on previous research by using direct measures of parental investment, including monetary and nonmonetary investment, and distinguishing household-level from child-specific resources. It also exploits the longitudinal nature of the CFPS to mediate the bias arising from the joint determination of family size and parental investment. Results show that having a younger sibling significantly reduces the average household expenditure per capita. It also directly reduces parental investment received by the firstborn child, with two exceptions: (1) for firstborn boys, having a younger sister does not pose any competition; and (2) for firstborn children whose mothers have completed primary education or more, having a younger brother does not reduce parental educational aspirations for them. Findings from this study provide the first glimpse into how children fare as China transitions to a universal two-child policy regime but have wider implications beyond the Chinese context.

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Data Availability

The CFPS data analyzed in the current study are available in the Peking University Open Research Data Platform at https://doi.org/10.18170/DVN/45LCSO.

Notes

  1. I am unable to estimate the effect of higher-parity births in this context because only 5% of the firstborn children had transitioned from having a sibling to two siblings in the survey. Consistent with the survey data, according to the 2015 Chinese census, births of parity three or more account for only a small fraction of the total births in China (Guo et al. 2019).

  2. 0 = no need to go to school, 6 = primary school, 9 = middle school, 12 = high school, 15 = vocational/technical college, 16 = four-year college, 18 = master’s degree or PhD.

  3. The nonagricultural hukou (feinong hukou) status grants various privileges and social benefits, and the conversion to nonagricultural hukou status is considered a key path of upward social mobility (Chan and Buckingham 2008; Chen and Fan 2016). Although hukou status could change over time, very few cases of change have been reported among the sample of children used in this study, some of which might be due to misreporting. Therefore, the variable is treated as time-invariant in the analysis, and the value reported in the latest wave of the survey is used.

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Acknowledgments

The research reported in this publication was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number P2CHD047879 and Award Number T32HD007163. The content is solely the responsibility of the author and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

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Chen, S. Parental Investment After the Birth of a Sibling: The Effect of Family Size in Low-Fertility China. Demography 57, 2085–2111 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-020-00931-2

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