Publication Type
Working Paper
Version
publishedVersion
Publication Date
1-2024
Abstract
Daughters may be less likely to migrate with parents because they tend to have more siblings in societies with strong son preference. Exploiting exogenous variation in twinning as an instrument, the authors find that a one unit increase in family size decreases the probability that a daughter migrates by 12.5 percentage points but has negligible effects on sons in China. The negative associations for daughters are stronger when migration restrictions are more stringent. The results indicate gendered family size trade-offs in a novel aspect of parental investment and highlight the need to relax migrant children’s education constraints.
Keywords
Child migration, family size trade-offs, son preference, parental investment
Discipline
Growth and Development | Income Distribution
Research Areas
International Economics
Embargo Period
5-30-2024
Citation
HO, Christine; WANG, Yutao; and ZUO, Sharon Xuejing.
Family size and child migration: Do daughters face greater trade-offs than sons?. (2024).
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soe_research/2750
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.