The effect of birth order on schooling in India

ABSTRACT

Using large nationally representative data, I estimate the effect of birth order on educational outcomes of children in India. To establish causality, endogeneity of family size is addressed by approaching an instrumental variable method. Employing a district fixed effects model and proportion of boys in the family as the instrument for number of children, I show that later-born children attain higher education compared to earlier-born children. Results are robust to inclusion of child, parents and household characteristics.

KEYWORDS:

• Birth order
• family size
• education
• India

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• I25
• J13

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Panel A also reports F-statistics for weak identification tests. The null hypothesis of weak instrument is rejected: The F-statistics are greater than 10.

² Kugler and Kumar (2015) show no evidence of sex-selective abortions at first parity in India.