Parents' early experience and children's years of schooling: The long-term impact of son preference

Abstract

It is well documented that years of schooling are largely influenced by the family. However, few studies have examined the intergenerational effect of individuals' early experience on their offspring's educational attainment. Using China's 1959–1961 famine as an exogenous shock, we construct a difference-in-difference model based on different famine severities across provinces and cohorts. We find that daughters of rural famine fathers have lower educational attainment. Mechanism analysis shows that male famine survivors are more likely to be observed in families with a strong son preference, which is passed on to their daughters and damages their educational attainment. The effect is more pronounced especially when the daughter is not an only child, has a brother, or the second child in the family is a son. The above results are robust to different specifications and alternative measures, suggesting that individuals' early experience may negatively affect the offspring's educational attainment through an entrenched cultural concept.