Siblings and human capital: A comparison between Italy and France

Abstract

Abstract This paper investigates how family size affects children's human capital, comparing Italy and France. We tested the in these countries, starting with the assumption that the higher the number of siblings, the fewer parental resources are available for each child, and the lower the probability that each child will successfully pursue his/her educational career. We find a negative correlation between the number of siblings and human capital. However, when the analysis is developed with a causal approach, the strength of the weakens in Italy and disappears in France. (ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.) 1. Introduction Studies of the determinants of educational attainment, occupation, and income usually consider the family background as a general effect. Meanwhile, fewer researchers have investigated family size as an independent effect. In this article, we focus our attention on a set of fundamental questions regarding social inequalities that may be linked to family background characteristics, especially family size. Based on the theory, our assumption is that the higher the number of siblings, the lower the likelihood is that an individual will attain the highest levels of education (Blake 1980). Does growing up in large families affect people's educational chances? If so, is the negative on educational attainment of belonging to a large family weakened among the more advantaged social classes? Has the negative of large family size on educational attainment changed over the course of the 20th century? Are there any significant differences in the educational opportunities and life chances of first- and lastborns? When families have large numbers of children, there is often a of the resources available to each individual child. This research seeks to investigate whether, as a result of varying national family policies, the dilution effect differs between countries. In our analysis of this issue, we focus on Italy and France, two European countries where family policies and fertility choices are very different, but for which comparable data are available. The main goal of this article is to describe the statistical association between siblings and human capital, after controlling for other variables (year at birth, social class, etc.). We note, however, that some unobserved factors may also influence both family size and children's outcomes. Previous studies (see, for example, Angrist and Evans 1998) have argued that one possible source of unobserved heterogeneity is the preference among parents to have smaller families, with each child being of higher quality. The level of status anxiety for children may drive both the family size and the education of each child (Dalla Zuanna 2007). Hence, the endogeneity issue should be taken into account when evaluating the true causal of family size on education. In the final section of this article, an instrumental variable approach will be applied, using the sibling sex composition as an exogenous determinant of family size variation (Conley and Glauber 2005). This approach - which was mainly chosen because of the specificity of the data source for Italy and France - is not completely satisfactory. Consequently, this part of the research should be viewed as merely a first step towards the formulation of a more exhaustive causal approach. We intend to contribute to the literature published to date by providing the first international comparison in this area of research. It certainly is a challenge to compare two countries, especially when the surveys are not identical. Fortunately, the variables of interest examined in this paper are quite similar for the two countries, enabling us to compare different behaviors, as well as different policies. The paper is organized as follows. The next section briefly summarizes the current state of the debate about these issues in the literature, and outlines the main hypotheses. …