IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/demogr/v49y2012i4p1385-1405.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is Biology Destiny? Birth Weight and Differential Parental Treatment

Author

Listed:
  • Amy Hsin

Abstract

Time diaries of sibling pairs from the PSID-CDS are used to determine whether maternal time investments compensate for or reinforce birth-weight differences among children. The findings demonstrate that the direction and degree of differential treatment vary by mother’s education. Less-educated mothers devote more total time and more educationally oriented time to heavier-birth-weight children, whereas better-educated mothers devote more total and more educationally oriented time to lower-birth-weight children. The compensating effects observed among highly educated mothers are substantially larger than the reinforcing effects among the least-educated mothers. The findings show that families redistribute resources in ways that both compensate for and exacerbate early-life disadvantages. Copyright Population Association of America 2012

Suggested Citation

  • Amy Hsin, 2012. "Is Biology Destiny? Birth Weight and Differential Parental Treatment," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 49(4), pages 1385-1405, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:demogr:v:49:y:2012:i:4:p:1385-1405
    DOI: 10.1007/s13524-012-0123-y
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s13524-012-0123-y
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s13524-012-0123-y?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Becker, Gary S & Tomes, Nigel, 1976. "Child Endowments and the Quantity and Quality of Children," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 84(4), pages 143-162, August.
    2. Sandra E. Black & Paul J. Devereux & Kjell G. Salvanes, 2007. "From the Cradle to the Labor Market? The Effect of Birth Weight on Adult Outcomes," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(1), pages 409-439.
    3. Ashlesha Datar & M. Kilburn & David Loughran, 2010. "Endowments and parental investments in infancy and early childhood," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 47(1), pages 145-162, February.
    4. Hauser, Robert M & Sewell, William H, 1986. "Family Effects in Simple Models of Education, Occupational Status and," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 4(3), pages 83-115, July.
    5. Janet Currie & Enrico Moretti, 2007. "Biology as Destiny? Short- and Long-Run Determinants of Intergenerational Transmission of Birth Weight," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 25(2), pages 231-264.
    6. Douglas Almond & Kenneth Y. Chay & David S. Lee, 2005. "The Costs of Low Birth Weight," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 120(3), pages 1031-1083.
    7. Gary S. Becker & Nigel Tomes, 1994. "Human Capital and the Rise and Fall of Families," NBER Chapters, in: Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis with Special Reference to Education, Third Edition, pages 257-298, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Gary Solon & Mary Corcoran & GRoger Gordon & Deborah Laren, 1991. "A Longitudinal Analysis of Sibling Correlations in Economic Status," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 26(3), pages 509-534.
    9. Behrman, Jere R & Pollak, Robert A & Taubman, Paul, 1982. "Parental Preferences and Provision for Progeny," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 90(1), pages 52-73, February.
    10. Behrman, Jere R & Rosenzweig, Mark R & Taubman, Paul, 1994. "Endowments and the Allocation of Schooling in the Family and in the Marriage Market: The Twins Experiment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 102(6), pages 1131-1174, December.
    11. Ashlesha Datar & M. Rebecca Kilburn & David S Loughran, 2006. "Health Endowments and Parental Investments in Infancy and Early Childhood," Working Papers 367, RAND Corporation.
    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. Almond, Douglas & Currie, Janet, 2011. "Human Capital Development before Age Five," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 15, pages 1315-1486, Elsevier.
    2. David S Loughran & Ashlesha Datar & M. Rebecca Kilburn, 2008. "The Response of Household Parental Investment to Child Endowments," Working Papers WR-404-1, RAND Corporation.
    3. Brandon J. Restrepo, 2016. "Parental investment responses to a low birth weight outcome: who compensates and who reinforces?," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 29(4), pages 969-989, October.
    4. Anna Aizer & Flávio Cunha, 2012. "The Production of Human Capital: Endowments, Investments and Fertility," NBER Working Papers 18429, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Danyelle Branco & Bladimir Carrillo & José G. Féres, 2018. "Birth Endowments And Parental Investments: New Evidence From Twins," Anais do XLIV Encontro Nacional de Economia [Proceedings of the 44th Brazilian Economics Meeting] 196, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics].
    6. Carrillo, B. & Branco, D., 2016. "Birth Weight and Family Resource Allocations: New Evidence from Twins," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 16/06, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    7. Emilia Del Bono & John Ermisch & Marco Francesconi, 2012. "Intrafamily Resource Allocations: A Dynamic Structural Model of Birth Weight," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 30(3), pages 657-706.
    8. Mark R. Rosenzweig & Junsen Zhang, 2009. "Do Population Control Policies Induce More Human Capital Investment? Twins, Birth Weight and China's "One-Child" Policy," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 76(3), pages 1149-1174.
    9. Del Bono, Emilia & Francesconi, Marco & Ermisch, John, 2008. "Intrafamily resource allocations: a dynamic model of birth weight," ISER Working Paper Series 2008-27, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    10. Savelyev, Peter A. & Ward, Benjamin C. & Krueger, Robert F. & McGue, Matt, 2022. "Health endowments, schooling allocation in the family, and longevity: Evidence from US twins," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    11. Ashlesha Datar & M. Rebecca Kilburn & David S Loughran, 2006. "Health Endowments and Parental Investments in Infancy and Early Childhood," Working Papers 367, RAND Corporation.
    12. Ashlesha Datar & M. Rebecca Kilburn & David S Loughran, 2006. "Health Endowments and Parental Investments in Infancy and Early Childhood," Working Papers WR-367, RAND Corporation.
    13. David Loughran & Ashlesha Datar & M. Kilburn, 2008. "The response of household parental investment to child endowments," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 6(3), pages 223-242, September.
    14. Liyousew G. Borga & Myroslav Pidkuyko, 2018. "Whoever Has Will Be Given More: Child Endowment and Human Capital Investment," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp616, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    15. Mark E. Mcgovern, 2013. "Still Unequal at Birth: Birth Weight,Socio-economic Status and Outcomes at Age 9," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 44(1), pages 53-84.
    16. Sandra E. Black & Paul J. Devereux & Kjell G. Salvanes, 2007. "From the Cradle to the Labor Market? The Effect of Birth Weight on Adult Outcomes," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(1), pages 409-439.
    17. Céline Lecavelier des Etangs-Levallois & Arnaud Lefranc, 2017. "Sibling correlations in terms of education, profession and earnings, in France," THEMA Working Papers 2017-12, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
    18. J. Gimenez-Nadal & Jose Molina, 2013. "Parents’ education as a determinant of educational childcare time," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 26(2), pages 719-749, April.
    19. Ashlesha Datar & Arkadipta Ghosh & Neeraj Sood, 2007. "Mortality Risks, Health Endowments, and Parental Investments in Infancy: Evidence from Rural India," NBER Working Papers 13649, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. J. Ignacio Gimenez-Nadal & José Alberto Molina & Yu Zhu, 2018. "Intergenerational mobility of housework time in the United Kingdom," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 16(4), pages 911-937, December.

    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:spr:demogr:v:49:y:2012:i:4:p:1385-1405. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.