Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP8885
Authors: Moshe Hazan; Hosny Zoabi
Abstract: This paper provides a new explanation for the narrowing and reversal of the gender education gap. It highlights the indirect effect of returns to human capital on parents' preferences for sons and the resulting demand for children and education. We assume that parents maximize the full income of their children and that males have an additional income, independently of their level of education. This additional income has two effects. First, it biases parental preferences towards sons. Second, it implies that females have relative advantage in producing income through education. We show that when the relative returns to human capital are sufficiently low, the bias in parents' preferences towards sons is relatively high, so that parents who have daughters first have more children. Daughters are born to larger families and hence receive less education. As returns to human capital increase, gender differences in producing income diminish, parents' bias towards sons declines, variation in family size falls and the positive correlation between family size and the number of daughters is weakened. When returns to human capital are sufficiently high, the relative advantage of females in education dominates differences in family size, triggering the reversal in gender education gap.
Keywords: fertility; gender; gender educational gap; returns to human capital
JEL Codes: I21; J13; O11
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Higher returns to human capital (J24) | Reduction in parental bias towards sons (J79) |
| Low returns to human capital (J24) | Bias towards sons (J16) |
| Bias towards sons (J16) | Larger family sizes (J12) |
| Larger family sizes (J12) | Negative impact on daughters' education (I24) |
| Higher returns to human capital (J24) | Smaller family sizes (J12) |
| Higher returns to human capital (J24) | Improved educational outcomes for girls (I24) |
| Reduction in parental bias towards sons (J79) | Improved educational outcomes for girls (I24) |