The effect of a sibling on the first-born child’s health: evidence from two-child families in China

Ekonomska Istraživanja

Qinying He¹  Qundi Feng¹  Chung-Ping A. Loh²  Tao Bu³  Fancun Meng⁴ 

[1] College of Economics & Management, South China Agricultural University;Department of Economics and Geography, Coggin College of Business, University of North Florida;School of Economics and Management, Beijing Jiaotong University;School of Public Health, Shantou University;

关键词: health;    children;    sibling;    two-child policy;    extended regression model;    china;   

DOI  :  10.1080/1331677X.2021.1931912

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

The first-born child's quality may be affected by a younger sibling in a family based on the quantity-quality trade-off theory. Using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey, we examine the causal effect of having a younger sibling on the health of the first-born child aged 2–12 in China. We use instrumental variables to address the potential endogeneity of having a younger sibling in the extended regression model. We found that having a sibling significantly decreases the height-for-age z-scores of the first-born child, and the greater age gap may alleviate the effect. Further analysis shows that the effect is particularly strong for the pre-school child under 6 years old and the child in a low-income family or the rural area. A sibling influences the first-born child's health by dietary pattern, physical activities, and medical services utilization. The robustness checks, based on individual fixed-effects model and propensity score matching approach, validate our findings, which suggest that future preventive intervention on the deterioration of first-born child’s health during the implementation of the universal two-child policy.

【 授权许可】

Unknown