IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/boi/wpaper/2019.16.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Brothers vs. Sisters: The Effect of Siblings' Gender on an Individual's Labor Market Performance

Author

Listed:
  • Yuval Mazar

    (Bank of Israel)

  • Uri Zilber

Abstract

This study examines—for the first time in Israel—the extent to which gender composition of siblings in the family influences their performance in the labor market. In particular, this work compares women with older brothers to women with older sisters, and men with older brothers to men with older sisters. The paper expands the conversation regarding the environment's influence on wages. Using data on non-ultra-Orthodox Jews born between 1975 and 1985, who were born last after two brothers or two sisters, we found that the gender of previous siblings has a statistically significant effect on wage only in certain population groups. Women of Ashkenazic descent who have two older sisters earn 7.0 percent more than women who have brothers, after controlling for other variables that may have an impact on wage. A similar effect was found for men from Ashkenazic descent. Most of the effect that we found for women was among those with high socioeconomic standing (women who live in localities in socioeconomic clusters 16–20), while for men, the effect was most prominent among those with lower and medium socioeconomic standing (those living in localities in socioeconomic clusters 1–15). We did not find robust results for women or men from Sephardic descent or mixed families.

Suggested Citation

  • Yuval Mazar & Uri Zilber, 2019. "Brothers vs. Sisters: The Effect of Siblings' Gender on an Individual's Labor Market Performance," Bank of Israel Working Papers 2019.16, Bank of Israel.
    • Handle: RePEc:boi:wpaper:2019.16
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://boiwebrepec.azurefd.net/RePEc/boi/wpaper/WP_2019.16.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2019
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joensen, Juanna Schrøter & Nielsen, Helena Skyt, 2018. "Spillovers in education choice," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 158-183.
    2. Stacey H. Chen & Yen-Chien Chen & Jin-Tan Liu, 2019. "The Impact of Family Composition on Educational Achievement," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 54(1), pages 122-170.
    3. Peter, Noemi & Lundborg, Petter & Webbink, Dinand, 2015. "The Effect of a Sibling's Gender on Earnings, Education and Family Formation," IZA Discussion Papers 9128, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Booth, Alison & Cardona-Sosa, Lina & Nolen, Patrick, 2014. "Gender differences in risk aversion: Do single-sex environments affect their development?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 126-154.
    5. Bertrand, Marianne, 2011. "New Perspectives on Gender," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 17, pages 1543-1590, Elsevier.
    6. Thomas Buser & Muriel Niederle & Hessel Oosterbeek, 2014. "Gender, Competitiveness, and Career Choices," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 129(3), pages 1409-1447.
    7. Dai, Xianhua & Heckman, James J., 2013. "Older siblings' contributions to young child's cognitive skills," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 235-248.
    8. Hurwitz, Michael & Goodman, Joshua Samuel & Smith, Jonathan & Fox, Julia, 2015. "The relationship between siblings’ college choices: Evidence from one million SAT-taking families," Scholarly Articles 22805380, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    9. Goodman, Joshua & Hurwitz, Michael & Smith, Jonathan & Fox, Julia, 2015. "The relationship between siblings’ college choices: Evidence from one million SAT-taking families," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 75-85.
    10. Karsten Hank & Hans-Peter Kohler, 2000. "Gender Preferences for Children in Europe," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 2(1).
    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. Anne Ardila Brenøe, 2018. "Origins of gender norms: sibling gender composition and women's choice of occupation and partner," ECON - Working Papers 294, Department of Economics - University of Zurich.
    2. Gurantz, Oded & Hurwitz, Michael & Smith, Jonathan, 2020. "Sibling effects on high school exam taking and performance," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 178(C), pages 534-549.
    3. Peter, Noemi & Lundborg, Petter & Webbink, Dinand, 2015. "The Effect of a Sibling's Gender on Earnings, Education and Family Formation," IZA Discussion Papers 9128, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Gordon B. Dahl & Dan-Olof Rooth & Anders Stenberg, 2020. "Intergenerational and Sibling Spillovers in High School Majors," NBER Working Papers 27618, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Anne Ardila Brenøe, 2022. "Brothers increase women’s gender conformity," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 35(4), pages 1859-1896, October.
    6. Cawley, John & Han, Euna & Kim, Jiyoon & Norton, Edward C., 2023. "Genetic nurture in educational attainment," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 49(C).
    7. Adam Altmejd & Andrés Barrios-Fernández & Marin Drlje & Joshua Goodman & Michael Hurwitz & Dejan Kovac & Christine Mulhern & Christopher Neilson & Jonathan Smith, 2021. "O Brother, Where Start Thou? Sibling Spillovers on College and Major Choice in Four Countries," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 136(3), pages 1831-1886.
    8. Christopher Neilson & Adam Altmejd & Andres Barrios-Fernandez & Marin Drlje & Dejan Kovac, 2019. "Siblings' Effects on College and Major Choices: Evidence from Chile, Croatia and Sweden," Working Papers 633, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    9. Joshua S. Goodman & Michael Hurwitz & Christine Mulhern & Jonathan Smith, 2019. "O Brother, Where Start Thou? Sibling-Spillovers in College Enrollment," CESifo Working Paper Series 7974, CESifo.
    10. Collins, Matthew, 2022. "Sibling Gender, Inheritance Customs and Educational Attainment: Evidence from Matrilineal and Patrilineal Societies," Working Papers 2022:5, Lund University, Department of Economics.
    11. Boschini, Anne & Dreber, Anna & von Essen, Emma & Muren, Astri & Ranehill, Eva, 2019. "Gender, risk preferences and willingness to compete in a random sample of the Swedish population✰," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    12. Cueva, Carlos & Rustichini, Aldo, 2015. "Is financial instability male-driven? Gender and cognitive skills in experimental asset markets," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 330-344.
    13. Aguirre, Josefa & Matta, Juan, 2021. "Walking in your footsteps: Sibling spillovers in higher education choices," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    14. Nifo, Annamaria & Scalera, Domenico & Vecchione, Gaetano, 2016. "What do you want to be when you grow up? Local institutional quality and the choice of the fields of study in Italy (2004-2007)," MPRA Paper 69907, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Dustan, Andrew, 2018. "Family networks and school choice," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 372-391.
    16. José de Sousa & Guillaume Hollard, 2021. "From Micro to Macro Gender Differences: Evidence from Field Tournaments," Post-Print hal-03389151, HAL.
    17. Jonathan F Schulz & Christian Thöni, 2016. "Overconfidence and Career Choice," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(1), pages 1-8, January.
    18. Claussen, Jörg & Czibor, Eszter & van Praag, Mirjam C., 2015. "Women Do Not Play Their Aces: The Consequences of Shying Away," IZA Discussion Papers 9612, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    19. Thomas Buser, 2016. "The Impact of Losing in a Competition on the Willingness to Seek Further Challenges," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(12), pages 3439-3449, December.
    20. Oriana Bandiera & Nidhi Parekh & Barbara Petrongolo & Michelle Rao, 2022. "Men are from Mars, and Women Too: A Bayesian Meta‐analysis of Overconfidence Experiments," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 89(S1), pages 38-70, June.

    More about this item

    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:boi:wpaper:2019.16. 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: Yossi Yakhin (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/boigvil.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.