Quantity-quality Trade-off Research Articles

Abolishing user fees, fertility choice, and educational attainment

This study examines the effect of abolishing user fees from the maternal and child health (MCH) services on child quantity and quality in South Africa in the post-apartheid era. Exploiting exogenous variation in exposure to the policy effect, we find that the policy resulted in lower fertility in households and greater educational attainment of children a decade later. The absence of the effects among children not subject to the policy eliminates channels through heterogeneous preexisting trends or unobserved concurrent changes. The important policy implications are (i) the theoretical predictions of the child quantity-quality tradeoff model characterize reproductive behavior among parents in developing countries; and (ii) MCH policy serves as a motivating force underlying the demographic transition and human capital development.

Opportunistic data reveal widespread species turnover in Enallagma damselflies at biogeographical scales

An information tradeoff exists between systematic presence/absence surveys and purely opportunistic (presence‐only) records for investigating the geography of community structure. Opportunistic species occurrence data may be of relatively limited quality, but typically involves numerous observations and species. Given the quality–quantity tradeoff, what can opportunistic data reveal about spatial patterns in community structure? Here we explore opportunistic data in describing geographic patterns of species composition, using over 4600 occurrence records of Enallagma damselflies in the United States. We tested phylogenetic scale (genus level, Enallagma major clades, Enallagma subclades) and spatial extent (U.S. vs watershed regions), hypothesizing that nonrandom structure is more likely at larger spatial extents. We also used three sets of systematic presence/absence surveys as a benchmark for validating opportunistic presence‐only records. Null model analysis of matrix coherence and species replacements showed many cases of nonrandom structure and widespread species turnover. This outcome was repeated across spatial and environmental gradients and community composition scenarios. Turnover dominated across the U.S. and two watersheds spanning biogeographic boundaries, but random assemblages were prevalent in a third watershed with limited longitudinal extent. Turnover also pervaded each level of phylogeny. Opportunistic presence‐only datasets showed identical patterns as systematic presence/absence datasets. These results indicate that extensive opportunistic data can be used to detect species turnover, especially at geographic scales where range margins are crossed.

Loss aversion and the quantity–quality tradeoff

Firms face an optimization problem that requires a maximal quantity output given a quality constraint. But how do firms incentivize quantity and quality to meet these dual goals, and what role do behavioral factors, such as loss aversion, play in the tradeoffs workers face? We address these questions with a theoretical model and an experiment in which participants are paid for both quantity and quality of a real effort task. Consistent with basic economic theory, higher quality incentives encourage participants to shift their attention from quantity to quality. However, we also find that loss averse participants shift their attention from quality to quantity to a greater degree when quality is weakly incentivized. These results can inform managers of appropriate ways to structure contracts, and suggest benefits to personalizing contracts based on individual behavioral characteristics.

The quality-quantity trade-off among Australian children

There is a lack of consistent empirical evidence to support an adverse effect on child outcomes with increasing family size, popularly known as the quality-quantity trade-off. The finding of a negative ‘average’ effect of family size indicates that the dilution of parental inputs and resources leads to worsening child quality. We investigate the effect of additional children across the distribution of child outcomes using quantile treatment effects, as parental investment could arguably be heterogeneous. Identification is achieved through two well-known instruments; we obtain upper bounds using multiple birth status of the child, as well as more conservative estimates using a sex composition instrument. We find that the trade-off exists for four different measures of cognitive development and health among Australian children, and affects all children irrespective of their position in the outcome distribution. Our findings are of particular relevance in light of the Australian government’s policy focus on boosting fertility.

Determinants of patent quality in U.S. manufacturing: technological diversity, appropriability, and firm size

We study the determinants of patent quality for a panel of U.S. manufacturing firms, focusing mainly on the effects of firm-level technological diversity and appropriability conditions. Technological diversity increases the quality-adjusted patent count on most of the diversity distribution, but its relationship with average patent quality is an inverted-U. We find that appropriability conditions (proxied by the rate of self-citations at the firm level) have similar, non-linear effects on both the average quality of patents, and quality-adjusted patents per R&D, which is consistent with an inverted-U pattern. Firm size has no effect on the average quality of patented innovation at the firm level. Finally, as R&D intensity increases, the rate of corporate innovation falls, but its average quality increases, indicating a quality–quantity trade-off in R&D.

Relaxed population policy, family size and parental investments in children’s education in rural Northwestern China

This paper examines the quantity-quality (QQ) trade-off of children in rural Northwestern China, using data collected from Gansu Province on a set of households whose children were born between the mid-1980s and early 1990s, the period when China’s one-child policy was temporarily relaxed. Under the relaxed policy, a second child was allowed if the first-born was a girl. Exploiting this policy change, this paper uses information on the sex of the first-born in a family to capture the causal effect of family size. In contrast to the results from ordinary least-squares regressions which suggest a strong QQ trade-off, the causal estimates based on the instrumental variable method indicate that rural parents hardly face such trade-off, at least in terms of their monetary investments in child education. The instrumental-variable estimation results remain similar when information on twin births is used for identification purpose.

Complex variation in habitat selection strategies among individuals driven by extrinsic factors.

Understanding behavioral strategies employed by animals to maximize fitness in the face of environmental heterogeneity, variability, and uncertainty is a central aim of animal ecology. Flexibility in behavior may be key to how animals respond to climate and environmental change. Using a mechanistic modeling framework for simultaneously quantifying the effects of habitat preference and intrinsic movement on space use at the landscape scale, we investigate how movement and habitat selection vary among individuals and years in response to forage quality–quantity tradeoffs, environmental conditions, and variable annual climate. We evaluated the association of dynamic, biotic forage resources and static, abiotic landscape features with large grazer movement decisions in an experimental landscape, where forage resources vary in response to prescribed burning, grazing by a native herbivore, the plains bison (Bison bison bison), and a continental climate. Our goal was to determine how biotic and abiotic factors mediate bison movement decisions in a nutritionally heterogeneous grassland. We integrated spatially explicit relocations of GPS‐collared bison and extensive vegetation surveys to relate movement paths to grassland attributes over a time period spanning a regionwide drought and average weather conditions. Movement decisions were affected by foliar crude content and low stature forage biomass across years with substantial interannual variation in the magnitude of selection for forage quality and quantity. These differences were associated with interannual differences in climate and growing conditions from the previous year. Our results provide experimental evidence for understanding how the forage quality–quantity tradeoff and fine‐scale topography drives fine‐scale movement decisions under varying environmental conditions.

UNDERSTANDING DEMOGRAPHIC DIVIDENDS IN AFRICA: THE NTA APPROACH

AbstractIn this paper, we document the economic implications of changing demographic conditions in Africa. To construct support ratios, we use National Transfer Accounts (NTA) estimates of per capita labor income and consumption by age, as well as population estimates and projections provided by the UN Population Division for 16 African countries. First, we find that, on average, support ratios are rising in Africa. But compared with the support ratios in Asia and Latin America, the magnitude of those in Africa is lower because the percentage of effective workers in the total population is also low. Second, we find that human capital spending is high in countries with low fertility rates, which suggests a quantity–quality trade-off. NTA estimates also show that to capitalize on the demographic dividend, countries have to create economic opportunities for young adults. In addition, investment in human and physical capital is important to generate the second demographic dividend.

“Sex in Marriage Is a Divine Gift”? Evidence on the Quantity-Quality Trade-off from the Manila Contraceptive Ban

We analyze the tradeoff between child quantity and quality in developing countries by estimating the effect of family size on child education in urban Philippines. To isolate exogenous changes in family size, we exploit a policy shock: in the late 1990s, the mayor of Manila enacted a municipal ban on modern contraceptives. Since other comparable cities in the Manila metropolitan area were not affected by the ban, this allows us to implement a difference-in-difference estimation of the effect of family size. We also exploit the fact that older mothers were less likely to become pregnant during the ban. Our results indicate that the contraceptive ban led to a significant increase in family size. They also provide evidence of a quality-quantity tradeoff: increased family size led to a sizable decrease in school performance.

CAUSES AND CHILD HEALTH CONSEQUENCES OF MATERNAL FERTILITY CHOICES IN CAMEROON

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)1.INTRODUCTIONMicroeconomic theory suggests that the greater the number of children a household has, the less is the amount of household resources that the household can devote to each child and hence the lower will be the quality of each child (Maitra and Pal, 2008). Children with many siblings tend to have poorer human capital outcomes. According to De Tray (1973) and Horton (1986), an additional child increases demand for resources in households facing fixed constraints in terms of both financial resources and the time inputs of parents. Children in larger families are therefore disadvantaged by having to share material resources, as well as the time and attention of caregivers with other siblings (Glick et al., 2007).Children with many siblings typically do less well with respect to long-term nutritional status indicators such as height-for-age z-scores (HAZ) which reflects stunting (Wolfe and Behrman, 1982; Lalou and Mbacke 1992; Desai, 1993), have lower academic achievements (Blake, 1981; Lloyd, 1994) and lower school enrolments (Rosenzweig and Schultz, 1987; Alderman et al., 2001). Other studies tend to assume that the composition of the population of children classified by health is unrelated to prior fertility decisions (Makepeace and Pal, 2007). Moreover, poor rural households who have access to physical assets may not care about current income and hence might choose to have more children as insurance against anticipated future income short-falls.Whether or not prior fertility decisions affect the composition of children classified by health, the role of schooling on reducing fertility has been established (Baird et al., 2011; Fafchamps and Shilpi, 2014; Duflo et al., 2015). Female schooling typically delays choices related to the timing of employment, marriage and childbearing. In this context, better educated women turn to face a higher opportunity costs in bearing and rearing children than their less educated counterparts (Becker, 1981). Education also mediates the quantity-quality trade-off of children in favour of quality-engendering investments that improve child health and reduce child mortality (Schultz, 2010).Related to this view is the observation that with more schooling and exposure, women acquire more information about their bodies and are more able to process that information to their advantage (Vavrus and Larson, 2003). The ensuing autonomy also increases the wisdom of later marriages, the use of contraceptives and lower fertility (Mason, 1986). By the same token, communities with higher proportions of more educated women are likely to provide better sanitation, medical services and shared health knowledge (Alderman et al., 2003) that have implications for lower fertility and better child health.In other to verify these views empirically using Cameroon data, a key question arises: what are the proximate direct and indirect effects of fertility choices on child health in Cameroon? The corresponding main objective of this paper is to empirically establish a link between maternal fertility (captured by total number of children ever born by a woman) and child health (captured by weight-for-height z-scores). The specific objectives are: (1) to examine the effect parental education on fertility choices; (2) to evaluate the consequences of fertility choices on child health; and (3) to suggest policy orientations on the basis of the findings.These objectives are motivated by two hypotheses: holding other things constant, (1) parental education is expected to be inversely related to fertility choices; and (2) higher fertility rates are likely to bring about the production of poor child health both directly and indirectly. The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents some mother and child health indicators in Cameroon. Section 3 reviews the literature. Section 4 dwells on the methodology and data. Section 5 reports the empirical results and the conclusion and policy orientations are summarized in Section 6. …

Courts in a Resource-Starved Developing Economy: Case Disposition and the Quantity-Quality Tradeoff in Post-Conflict Nepal

An effective judiciary is key to prosperous markets and sustained economic development, yet empirical evidence on the functioning of courts in the developing world is very scarce. We examine a court-level panel dataset from the resource-starved, post-conflict Nepal to assess the determinants of the volume of case disposition and presence of a quantity-quality tradeoff. We advance the existing empirical literature on courts by utilizing a novel measure of judicial staffing and suggesting a new instrumental variables approach to address the associated endogeneity concerns. Unlike previous research on judiciaries elsewhere, we find that in Nepal judicial staffing exhibits a robustly positive effect on court output and that caseload-induced congestion effects may be important. We do not find evidence implying that increasing court output would decrease adjudicatory quality. We discuss the policy implications of our results.

Does population control lead to better child quality? Evidence from China’s one-child policy enforcement

Scholarly evidence on the quantity-quality trade-off is mixed in part because of the identification challenge due to endogenous family size. This paper provides new evidence of the causal effect of child quantity on child quality by exploiting regional differences in the enforcement intensity of China’s one-child policy (OCP) as an exogenous source of variation in family size. Using the percentage of current mothers of primary childbearing age who gave a higher order birth in 1981, we construct a quantitative indicator of the extent of local violation of the OCP, referred to as the excess fertility rate (EFR). We then use regional differences in EFRs, net differences in pre-existing fertility preferences and socio-economic characteristics, to proxy for regional differences in OCP enforcement intensity. Using micro data from the Chinese Population Censuses, we find that prefectures with stricter enforcement of the OCP have experienced larger declines in family size and also greater improvements in children’s education. Despite the evident trade-off between family size and child quality in China, our quantitative estimates suggest that China’s OCP makes only a modest contribution to the development of its human capital.

Does the one-child policy improve children's human capital in urban China? A regression discontinuity design

This paper is the first to examine the causal relationship between China's One-Child Policy (OCP) and the long-term accumulation of human capital by a regression discontinuity design. Based on the 2005 China Inter-census Survey data, we observe a strong policy shock upon the probability of being a single child among people born around the starting point of OCP, which in turn significantly increases their educational attainment in adulthood. The results strongly suggest that there exists a quantity-quality trade-off as renewed by Becker, and the trade-off is more pronounced in the economically less developed regions and among families with the same-sex children. The results shed light on the re-understanding of China's family planning initiative as well as the application of regression discontinuity designs.

Productivity and Quality in Health Care: Evidence from the Dialysis Industry

We show that healthcare providers face a tradeoff between increasing the number of patients they treat and improving their quality of care. To measure the magnitude of this quality-quantity tradeoff, we estimate a model of dialysis provision that explicitly incorporates a centre’s unobservable and endogenous choice of treatment quality while allowing for unobserved differences in productivity across centres. We find that a centre that reduces its quality standards such that its expected rate of septic infections increases by 1 percentage point can increase its patient load by 1.6%, holding productivity, capital, and labour fixed; this corresponds to an elasticity of quantity with respect to quality of−0.2. Notably, our approach provides estimates of productivity that control for differences in quality, whereas traditional methods would misattribute lower-quality care to greater productivity

The Effect of Sibling Size on Children’s Health and Education: Is there a Quantity-Quality Trade-off?

ABSTRACTThe quantity-quality trade-off is one important motivation for the family planning policies in many developing countries. In this paper, we examine the effect of number of siblings on children’s health and education in China. We find evidence of quantity-quality trade-off in children’s health but not in children’s education. Our study has three contributions. First, we focus not only on children’s education but also on children’s health, which has received rather little attention in the literature. Secondly, we use a new source of exogenous variation in fertility – variations of the strictness of the One-Child policy across localities in China – to construct instrumental variable's (IV's). Finally, we empirically explore the underlying mechanism of the quantity-quality trade-off, and find supporting evidence for the resource dilution hypothesis.

Faster reproductive rates trade off against offspring growth in wild chimpanzees

Life history theory predicts a trade-off between offspring quality and quantity. Among large-bodied mammals, prolonged lactation and infant dependence suggest particularly strong potential for a quality-quantity trade-off to exist. Humans are one of the only such species to have been examined, providing mixed evidence under a peculiar set of circumstances, including extensive nutritional provisioning by nonmothers and extrasomatic wealth transmission. Here, we examine trade-offs between reproductive rate and one aspect of offspring quality (body size) in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii), a species with long periods of infant dependence and little direct provisioning. Juvenile lean body mass, estimated using urinary creatinine excretion, was positively associated with the interval to the next sibling's birth. These effects persisted into adolescence and were not moderated by maternal identity. Maternal depletion could not explain poor offspring growth, as older mothers had larger offspring, and low maternal energy balance during lactation predicted larger, not smaller, juvenile size. Instead, our data suggest that offspring growth suffers when mothers wean early to invest in new reproductive efforts. These findings indicate that chimpanzee mothers with the resources to do so prioritize production of new offspring over prolonged investment in current offspring.

Stature and sibship: historical evidence

This paper examines historical evidence for a quality–quantity trade-off between sibship size and height as an indicator of health. The existing literature has focused more on education than on health and it has produced mixed results. Historical evidence is limited by the lack of household-level data with which to link an individual’s height with his or her childhood circumstances. Nevertheless a few recent studies have shed light on this issue. Evidence for children in interwar Britain and for soldiers born in the 1890s who enlisted in the British army at the time of World War I is reviewed in detail. Both studies support the idea of a significant trade-off, partly due to income dilution and partly because, in these settings, large families were a conduit for infection. Evidence from country-level time series is consistent with this view. The fertility decline that began in the late nineteenth century made a modest but nevertheless significant contribution to the overall increase in heights during the following half-century.

The Upside-Down Economics of Regulated and Otherwise Rigid Prices

A version of the Becker-Lancaster characteristics model featuring quality-quantity trade offs reveals a number of surprising market behaviors that can result from price regulations that are imposed on competitive markets for products that have adjustable non-price attributes. Quality need not clear a competitive market in the same way that prices do, because quality can reduce the willingness to pay for quantity. Producers can benefit from price ceilings, at the expense of consumers. Price ceilings can result in quality-degradation “death spirals” that would not occur under quality regulation or excise taxation. The features of tastes and technology that lead to such outcomes are summarized with pairwise comparisons of (not necessarily constant) elasticities.

Parents face quantity-quality trade-offs between reproduction and investment in offspring in Iceland.

How to optimally allocate time, energy and investment in an effort to maximize one's reproductive success is a fundamental problem faced by all organisms. This effort is complicated when the production of each additional offspring dilutes the total resources available for parental investment. Although a quantity–quality trade-off between producing and investing in offspring has long been assumed in evolutionary biology, testing it directly in humans is difficult, partly owing to the long generation time of our species. Using data from an Icelandic genealogy (Íslendingabók) over two centuries, I address this issue and analyse the quantity–quality trade-off in humans. I demonstrate that the primary impact of parents on the fitness of their children is the result of resources and or investment, but not genes. This effect changes significantly across time, in response to environmental conditions. Overall, increasing reproduction has negative fitness consequences on offspring, such that each additional sibling reduces an individual's average lifespan and lifetime reproductive success. This analysis provides insights into the evolutionary conflict between producing and investing in children while also shedding light on some of the causes of the demographic transition.

The offspring quantity-quality trade-off and human fertility variation.

The idea that trade-offs between offspring quantity and quality shape reproductive behaviour has long been central to economic perspectives on fertility. It also has a parallel and richer theoretical foundation in evolutionary ecology. We review the application of the quantity–quality trade-off concept to human reproduction, emphasizing distinctions between clutch size and lifetime fertility, and the wider set of forces contributing to fertility variation in iteroparous and sexually reproducing species like our own. We then argue that in settings approximating human evolutionary history, several factors limit costly sibling competition. Consequently, while the optimization of quantity–quality trade-offs undoubtedly shaped the evolution of human physiology setting the upper limits of reproduction, we argue it plays a modest role in accounting for socio-ecological and individual variation in fertility. Only upon entering the demographic transition can fertility limitation be clearly interpreted as strategically orientated to advancing offspring quality via increased parental investment per child, with low fertility increasing descendant socio-economic success, although not reproductive success. We conclude that existing economic and evolutionary literature has often overemphasized the centrality of quantity–quality trade-offs to human fertility variation and advocate for the development of more holistic frameworks encompassing alternative life-history trade-offs and the evolved mechanisms guiding their resolution.