Number of Children and Investment in Education

• Women reached parity in higher education with males in the 1980s
• Sibship size and educational inequality: Hypotheses
• Trade off between quality and quantity --those who care more about quality have less kids, but those who 
• Resource dilution hypothesis
• Parental resources are diluted -- those in larger families are educationally disadvantaged
• Hypotheses from resource dilution hypothesis
• Under financial constraints, parents are more likely to invest in child with higher rate of return
• Because of changes in the economy, in past sons would be more likely to invest in sons, but now in daughters
• Results
• Number of children has declined
• In earlier period, males more likely to graduate college, now not
• No gender differences in college completion in early period for 1 child, but in second period, women more likely
• As number of children goes up, likelihood of college completion goes down
• In newer period, women advantage is higher, but goes down with more kids as well
• Summary
• We asked how # of children in family affect 
• Results consistent in RDH -- that parents invest more in marginal return to education, and so larger family sizes decrease the advantage to the benefited gender (male or female depending on period)