Fathering Daughters and Personality

Abstract

The psychology literature has shown that the big five personality traits develop over a person’s lifetime. There is some suggestive evidence that major life events such as buying a house, getting married, being fired from a job, and having children affect personality. However, these associations cannot be interpreted as causal. This is the first paper that studies the causal effect of a life event - the gender of parents' first-born child - on the big five personality trait scores of parents. Using yearly longitudinal data (2008 – 2017) I find that having a first-born daughter (instead of son) causally increases fathers' extraversion and neuroticism. I find strongly heterogeneous effects based on fathers' education level and age of the child. Interestingly, while the increased neuroticism disappears after the child is 6 years old, the increase in extraversion remains. The data suggest that the behaviors of children, such as obediency and dependency on others, likely affect fathers' personality. In line with the expectations, I find no effects on any of the personality traits of mothers.