American Economic Review Vol. 107 No. 9 2017

Why Are Indian Children So Short? The Role of Birth Order and Son Preference

Seema Jayachandran¹; Rohini Pande²

¹ Department of Economics, Northwestern University, 2211 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208 (email: ) · ² Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard University, Mailbox 46, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (email: )

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.

DOI

10.1257/aer.20151282

Volume

107

Issue

9

Pages

2600-2629

Language

en

Sources

bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

Cite

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