Big Sisters
Resource type
Report
Authors/contributors
- Jakiela, Pamela (Author)
- Ozier, Owen (Author)
- Fernald,, Lia (Author)
- Knauer, Heather (Author)
Title
Big Sisters
Abstract
We model household investments in young children when parents and older siblings share caregiving
responsibilities and when investments by older siblings contribute to young children’s human
capital accumulation. To test the predictions of our model, we estimate the impact of having one
older sister (as opposed to one older brother) on early childhood development in a sample of rural
Kenyan households with otherwise similar family structures. Older sibling gender is not related
to household structure, subsequent birth spacing, or other observable characteristics, so we treat
the presence of an older girl (as opposed to an older boy) as plausibly exogenous. Having an older
sister rather than an older brother improves younger siblings’ vocabulary and fine motor skills by
more than 0.1 standard deviations. Viewed through the lens of our model, the empirical pattern we
observe suggests that: (i) older siblings’ investments in young children contribute to their human
capital accumulation, and (ii) households perceive lower returns to investing in older girls than in
older boys.
Date
October 2020
Accessed
08/11/2020, 22:38
Citation
Jakiela, P., Ozier, O., Fernald, L., & Knauer, H. (2020). Big Sisters. https://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/big-sisters.pdf
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