Why are Indian children so short? the role of birth order and son preference

Seema Jayachandran; Rohini Pande

doi:10.1257/aer.20151282

Why are Indian children so short? the role of birth order and son preference

Seema Jayachandran, Rohini Pande

Economics

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

192 Scopus citations

Abstract

Child stunting in India exceeds that in poorer regions like sub-Saharan Africa. Data on over 168,000 children show that, relative to Africa, India's height disadvantage increases sharply with birth order. We posit that India's steep birth order gradient is due to favoritism toward eldest sons, which affects parents' fertility decisions and resource allocation across children. We show that, within India, the gradient is steeper for high-son-preference regions and religions. The gradient also varies with sibling gender as predicted. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that India's steeper birth order gradient can explain over one-half of the India-Africa gap in average child height.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	2600-2629
Number of pages	30
Journal	American Economic Review
Volume	107
Issue number	9
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20151282
State	Published - Sep 2017

Funding

* Jayachandran: Department of Economics, Northwestern University, 2211 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208 (email: [email protected]); Pande: Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard University, Mailbox 46, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (email: [email protected]). We thank Patrick Agte, Alejandro Favela, Lydia Kim, Suanna Oh, and Alexander Persaud for excellent research assistance. We are grateful to Abhijit Banerjee, Jere Behrman, Diane Coffey, Angus Deaton, Rebecca Dizon-Ross, Jean Drèze, Erica Field, Dominic Leggett, Nachiket Mor, Debraj Ray, Dean Spears, Tomasz Strzalecki, Alessandro Tarozzi, several seminar participants, and three anonymous referees for helpful comments. We thank the International Growth Centre, National Science Foundation (Jayachandran) and Harvard’s Women and Public Policy Program (Pande) for funding. The authors declare that they have no relevant or material financial interests that relate to the research described in this paper.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Economics and Econometrics

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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10.1257/aer.20151282

Cite this

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abstract = "Child stunting in India exceeds that in poorer regions like sub-Saharan Africa. Data on over 168,000 children show that, relative to Africa, India's height disadvantage increases sharply with birth order. We posit that India's steep birth order gradient is due to favoritism toward eldest sons, which affects parents' fertility decisions and resource allocation across children. We show that, within India, the gradient is steeper for high-son-preference regions and religions. The gradient also varies with sibling gender as predicted. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that India's steeper birth order gradient can explain over one-half of the India-Africa gap in average child height.",

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note = "Funding Information: * Jayachandran: Department of Economics, Northwestern University, 2211 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208 (email: [email protected]); Pande: Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard University, Mailbox 46, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (email: [email protected]). We thank Patrick Agte, Alejandro Favela, Lydia Kim, Suanna Oh, and Alexander Persaud for excellent research assistance. We are grateful to Abhijit Banerjee, Jere Behrman, Diane Coffey, Angus Deaton, Rebecca Dizon-Ross, Jean Dr{\`e}ze, Erica Field, Dominic Leggett, Nachiket Mor, Debraj Ray, Dean Spears, Tomasz Strzalecki, Alessandro Tarozzi, several seminar participants, and three anonymous referees for helpful comments. We thank the International Growth Centre, National Science Foundation (Jayachandran) and Harvard{\textquoteright}s Women and Public Policy Program (Pande) for funding. The authors declare that they have no relevant or material financial interests that relate to the research described in this paper.",

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Why are Indian children so short? the role of birth order and son preference

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ASJC Scopus subject areas

UN SDGs

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Why are Indian children so short? the role of birth order and son preference

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Funding

ASJC Scopus subject areas

UN SDGs

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