Causal effects of family income on educational investment and child outcomes: Evidence from a policy reform in Japan

The Child Allowance Policy (CAP) in Japan, a nationwide cash transfer program for families with children, was designed to increase household expenditures toward children. Using unforeseen changes in the CAP that occurred due to the electoral results as a source of exogenous variation in income in the early 2010s, this paper examines the causal impact of family income on households’ private educational expenditures and child outcomes in the short-run, based on a longitudinal parent-child survey. The ordinary least squares (OLS) and first-differenced (FD) results show that family income is in most cases positively correlated with child's cognitive outcomes, and, to a lesser extent, with families’ educational expenditure on their children. Based on the FD instrumental variable (FD-IV) estimation, using unexpected changes in CAP payments as an instrument, we find positive income effects on educational expenditure in the short-run. However, we did not find statistically significant impacts on children's cognitive outcomes.     

Birth order and intergenerational income mobility in Japan: Is the first-born child different?

This study examines how birth order affects intergenerational income mobility (IGM) in Japan, focusing on the difference in IGM between firstborn and later-born children. The elasticities of sons’ income with respect to fathers’ income are separately estimated for sons who are firstborn and sons who are later born by family size using a two-sample, two-stage least squares approach. For sons born in 1926–1981, this study finds that in families with four or more children, intergenerational income elasticity (IGE) for firstborn sons is substantially and significantly higher than that for later-born sons. However, no significant birth order effects are found in households with two or three children.     

Identifying the Link Between Food Security and Incarceration

Previous work has found that incarceration (defined as confinement in an adult correctional facility) has a variety of impacts on the incarcerated individual and their families including effects on employment and income, educational outcomes of children, and food insecurity (Wallace and Cox 2012 ). However, previous literature does not identify a causal impact of incarceration on food insecurity. From a policy perspective, identification of a causal link may aid in understanding why some affected families experience food insecurity, while similarly situated families do not. In this article, we utilize microlevel data from the Fragile Families and Child Well Being Study to provide evidence of a causal impact of incarceration on food insecurity. This is an important dynamic to understand because the prevalence of incarceration in the United States is relatively high, especially among groups where food insecurity is more prevalent (e.g., Blacks), and the associated externalities can have substantial impacts on families that may reach well beyond traditional costs associated with incarceration. The complex relationship between food insecurity and incarceration is estimated within a causal inference approach. We find evidence that incarceration leads to roughly a 4 percentage point increase in the likelihood of food insecurity among households with children that have experienced a parental incarceration.     

Fertility decline and the heights of children in Britain, 1886–1938

In this paper we argue that the fertility decline that began around 1880 had substantial positive effects on the health of children, as the quality–quantity trade-off would suggest. We use microdata from a unique survey from 1930s Britain to analyse the relationship at the household level between the standardised heights of children and the number of children in the family. Our results suggest that heights are influenced positively by family income per capita and negatively by the number of children or the degree of crowding in the household. The evidence suggests that family size affected the health of children through its influence on both nutrition and disease. Applying our results to long-term trends, we find that rising household income and falling family size contributed significantly to improving child health between 1886 and 1938. Between 1906 and 1938 these variables account for 40% of the increase in heights, and much of this effect is due to falling family size. We conclude that the fertility decline is a neglected source of the rapid improvement in health in the first half of the twentieth century.     

福建农村人力资本水平与农民收入

采用国家统计局福建农村住户调查数据,实证分析了农户家庭人力资本水平与家庭收入之间的关系,结果表明:户主的文化程度越高,农户家庭的总收入越高,家庭收入中来自稳定的收入越多,收入来源越多样化,家庭的生活水平越稳定。随着家庭平均教育水平的提高,农户家庭的收入也不断提高,教育投资的收入弹性呈递增趋势,随着时间的推进,教育对收入的效应逐渐加大。从培训来看,接受培训的农户家庭,其收入明显高于未接受者培训的家庭的人均纯收入,而且随着家庭劳动力接受培训次数的增加,家庭收入也不断增加。     

New “useless education theory”: Highly educated parents' expectations for their children's education—Evidence from the one-child policy

Using data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) 2010 and a strictly implemented one-child policy as a quasi-experiment, this paper analyses the changes in parents' educational expectations of their children and the underlying mechanisms in a fuzzy regression discontinuity framework. It was found that one-child policy compliers have lower educational expectations for their children after acquiring an advanced education than those who did not. The finding remains valid after robustness analysis and placebo tests. Combined with an examination of the intergenerational effects of birth, this finding may be related to parents' assessment of and responses to educational returns and equality of educational opportunities. It was also found that parents with lower educational attainment in the high-income group have higher educational expectations than those with higher educational attainment, while for those with lower income, there is no significant difference between higher educational attainment and otherwise, which indirectly verifies the causal inference of this paper. The finding of this study explains the new “useless education theory” and provides a new perspective for understanding the intergenerational transmission of education.     

A simultaneous analysis of the labour force participation of married women and the presence of young children in the family

Summary The labour force participation of married women and the presence of young children in the family show a strongly negative correlation. In this article it is investigated whether this correlation is a reflection of a causal relationship between these two variables. To answer this question, a simultaneous logit analysis, following Mallax, is applied to data of the Dutch census of 1971 that are grouped by COROP region. The results suggest that there exists an asymmetric causal relationship between both variables with the causality running from the labour force participation of married women to the presence of young children in the family.The authors are indebted to Professors C. de Galan and C.K.F. Nieuwenburg and Mr. F.A.A.M. van Winden for valuable comments.     

Family size,birth order and educational attainment: Evidence from China

Using Chinese Household Income Project survey data from 2013, this paper investigates the effects of family size and birth order on children's educational attainment. The endogeneity of family size is an important identification issue in the test of the quantity-quality tradeoff. We use variations in a mother's exposure to various phases of China's family planning policies by Hukou type, ethnicity and regional differences in fine rates as instruments to identify the causal effects of family size. We find that family size has a negative effect on children's education. Using family fixed effects model, we find a positive birth order effect. In addition, both the family size and birth order effects are more pronounced for families where first-born children are females than those where the first-borns are males. Birth order effect is more evident in financially constrained families.     

中国居民家庭收入代际传递性分析

本文通过对父子收入代际弹性和家庭收入代际弹性的研究,发现子女收入很大程度上受到父亲收入或家庭收入的影响,证明了中国居民收入代际之间存在着较为明显的传递效应,特别是低收入群体。通过内外因分析,可以发现教育成为影响中国居民收入代际传递现象的重要因素。教育是一种重要的代际流动机制,个人教育水平提高和教育环境的公平可以使低收入群体有机会流向更高收入阶层。     

What divides the first and second generations? Family time of arrival and educational outcomes for immigrant youth

In this article, I develop a measure of host country experience, which I call “relative time of arrival,” to explore differences between first- and second-generation immigrants. This measure is finer than immigrant generation and expands on the widely used measures of years since migration and age at migration. It is scaled so that zero indicates that a child was born in the same year that the family migrated, and the negative side of the scale measures parents' host country experience before the child's birth. I then use relative time of arrival to assess whether parents' host country experience before birth matters and generally find that it does not. I also study the dividing line between the first and second generations, specifically, whether there are differences in educational outcomes between early arriving first-generation immigrants and second-generation immigrants whose parents arrived shortly before birth. For most outcomes considered, I find that the transition between the first and second generations is relatively smooth, indicating that these groups are not as distinct as often thought. Thus, observed differences between the first and second generations are driven by the lower performance of late-arriving first-generation children.     

Intergenerational mobility and institutional change in 20th century China

We examine the persistence of socioeconomic status across generations, measured by educational attainment, among urban Chinese born between 1930 and 1985. The persistence of status follows a pronounced, robust U-shaped pattern, falling among cohorts educated following the Communist revolution of 1949, and rising among cohorts educated following the reforms of the late 1970s. The pattern is not driven by the Cultural Revolution or by changing associations between education and income. The U-shape also appears in complementary datasets covering rural China. We discuss the policies behind a non-monotonic relationship between educational expansion and social mobility across the institutional regimes we study.     

我国城市化水平与农民增收关系实证研究

为了定量化研究城市化水平与农民增收的关系,本文采用1978-2008年度时间序列数据,利用Eviews3.0软件对其进行单位根检验、协整分析和格兰杰因果检验,实证研究了城市化水平与农民增收之间的关系。结果表明：我国城市化水平与农民增收之间存单向的因果关系,城镇化是引起农民收入增加的重要原因,城市化水平每提高一个单位,农村人均净收入就增加156个单位。在此基础上,提出了解决我国＂三农＂问题的政策理念。     

Income inequality and educational expenditures on children: Evidence from the China Family Panel Studies

Using the data from the China Family Panel Studies from 2010 to 2018, we find that rising income inequality causes parents to spend more on children’s education, both in school and out of school. The impact of income inequality on out-of-school expenditures is significant at intensive and extensive margins, especially for study-related tutoring participation. Furthermore, we find some empirical evidence suggesting that in response to rising inequality, mothers spend more time on children’s education and there exists a substitution effect between time and money. Further analysis suggests two potential reasons for the rising education spending: (1) a higher income inequality resulting from rising skill premium strengthens parents’ long-lasting cultural attitude towards education to higher levels, inducing them to spend more on educational investment, and (2) a higher income inequality increases the value of higher education, leading to a stronger demand for better educational opportunities, and then, more intense education competition, forcing parents to invest more in education.     

父代关系与代际收入流动：基于教育和就业的视角

文章运用计量方法分析了父代关系与中国代际收入流动性的关系。我们用2010年中国家庭追踪调查中父代为了子女上学和就业“找关系”来衡量寻租行为,通过工具变量法和分位回归法探讨了父代关系对不同人群的影响。结果显示,为子女就学（就业）找关系对于代际收入流动有一定的促进作用;进一步,分位回归和不同社会区域特征的影响揭示,教育和就业领域的“寻租市场”远远不是完全有效市场,在这一市场中所进行的寻租行为进一步加剧了教育和就业资源在城乡之间、不同收入阶层之间原本就存在的分布不均。教育资源均等化和劳动力市场的进一步市场化对于减少为了子代福利而进行的寻租腐败行为、以及建设机会均等的和谐社会具有重要意义。     

Chinese household saving and dependent children: Theory and evidence

This paper examines the impact of family size on household saving. We first study a theoretical life-cycle model that includes finite lifetimes and saving for retirement and in which parents care about the consumption by their dependent children. The model implies a negative relationship between the number of dependent children in the family and the household saving rate. Then, we test the model's implications using new survey data on household finances in China. We use the differential enforcement of the one-child policy across counties to address the possible endogeneity between household saving and fertility decisions in a two-stage least squares Tobit regression. We find that Chinese families with fewer dependent children have significantly higher saving rates. The data yields several additional insights on household saving patterns. Households with college-age children have lower saving rates, and households residing in urban areas have higher saving rates and a lower ratio of education expenditures to income. However, having an additional child reduces saving rates more for households in urban areas than in rural areas. Our regressions also indicate that saving rates vary with age and tend to be higher for households with more workers, higher education, better health, and more assets.     

Could a Resource Export Boom Reduce Workers’ Earnings? The Labour-Market Channel in Indonesia

For a decade from 2000, Indonesia underwent a natural-resource export boom. Aggregate income rose, but real labour earnings stagnated. Employment rose, too, but mainly in low-skill sectors with predominantly informal employment arrangements. In this article, we reveal causal connections from the aggregate phenomenon of Dutch disease to these labour-market outcomes. We first explain broad sectoral trends, and then, integrating data from several national surveys, investigate sources of variation in boom-era labour earnings. We use instrumental variables to address issues of endogeneity and selection in earnings equations. After controlling for individual and district features, we find that the intensity of palm oil production—palm oil having been a key booming resource export—robustly predicts diminished formal employment, and that lower formality, in turn, robustly predicts lower earnings. Our findings establish causal linkages absent from prior studies, and so provide a structural dimension to ongoing debates over persistent poverty, rising inequality, and the lack of educational progress in Indonesia.     

职业初期的“拼爹”严重吗?——基于代际收入传递的视角

文章聚焦于子代职业早期，建立理论模型和连续变量处理效应模型研究父代收入对子代收入的因果性影响，研究发现：第一，理论上讲，代际收入弹性与人力资本回报率、社会资本回报率正相关，与政府对人力资本投资的累进性负相关；第二，在子代职业早期阶段，父亲收入对子代收入有正向因果性影响，且代际收入弹性整体偏低，说明代际收入流动性相对较大；第三，局部代际收入弹性和子代收入波动随着父亲收入水平的上升而下降，说明低收入父亲的子女的代际收入流动性相对较低，易发生贫困的代际传递；第四，代际收入传递存在一定的城乡和性别差异。以上结论说明在我国职业早期代际收入流动性较高，因此，政府在实施相关提升代际收入流动性的政策时，可侧重于劳动者职业生涯的中、后期，同时，应继续提高公共教育政策的累进性。     

The impact of parental education on children’s outcomes in China

This paper exploits the exogenous shock to basic education during the Chinese Cultural Revolution to estimate the causal relationship between parental schooling and children’s educational attainment in China. Using deviations of cohort graduation rates from predicted education trends as instruments for parents’ education, the results indicate that an additional year of parental education increases children’s probability of completing junior and senior high schools by 7.94 and 9.76%, respectively. Parental education not only has positive and significant effects on children’s schooling outcomes, its importance also increases with children’s education level. These findings suggest that public investment in education has important long-term effects on individual’s educational achievement.     

Education and growth: A simple model with complicated dynamics

We construct a simple model of education and growth in which children spend a fraction of their time and parents spend a fraction of their income on education. Both a strategic complementarity and an intergenerational externality are present. The interactions between each pair of consecutive generations lead to rich dynamics. We show that multiple growth equilibria arise, some of them periodic and some aperiodic. We also find a negative correlation between volatility and growth, without a one‐way causal relationship between the two being, necessarily, present. Rather, this negative correlation is driven by the structural characteristics of the economy.     

Does the early bird catch the worm? Evidence and interpretation on the long-term impact of school entry age in China

The long-term impact of children's age at primary school entry on educational attainment and labor market outcomes is one of the primary concerns to families, educators, and policymakers. Using a nationally representative survey of families and individuals, this paper is among the first to explore these effects in a causal sense in the Chinese context and understand the underlying mechanisms. We use a regression discontinuity (RD) design that employs the threshold date for primary school entry set by the 1986 Compulsory Education Law of China as a source of exogenous variation in the timing of school entry. We first document a salient and robust compliance rate of school entry requirement. RD estimates indicate that being born right after the cutoff date significantly increases years of schooling and annual earnings for non-agricultural jobs for the full sample. We also observe remarkable heterogeneous effects on labor market performance by gender. Being born right after the cutoff increases the probability of being in the labor force for men, but decreases that for women. We find that the decline in female labor force participation is mainly driven by women who come from economically and socially disadvantaged families. Further evidence suggests that this decline can be explained by supply-side factors including fertility decision and childcare provisions.