A Study On Gender Differences In The Number Of Societies And Education

Human capital accumulation is a decisive factor of sustained economic growth and the true source of industrial development.In 1960,Becker put forward the quantity-quality model,opening a mew perspective of micro-family in researching human capital accumulation.Then people focus on the allocation of limited family resources and the trade-off between child quantity and quality.Western counties have explained this question on the basis of “resource dilution” hypothesis and data evidence,a well-accepted finding is that sibship size has been found to be negatively associated with educational attainment.But,it is a doubt that whether the observed experience in Western societies is still applicable in many developing counties,especially China that is in the economic and social transformation period.China has experienced changes in economy,education and population polices.Also,traditionally with strong son preference norms,the society consider children to breed and support their elder parents.This paper examines the effect that family sibship size has on educational attainment,and its gender gap.In this study,we use the China General Social Survey data in 2008(CGSS 2008),which is leaded by Renmin University of China.CGSS2008 data collects education years and experiences of individual, information about education, work and family life of mother and father in the individual’s early family, as well as members background of the family.This article,firstly, analyzes the effect of family sibship size on educational attainment,and its differences between male and female.Secondly,according to sex and seniority,we test the effect of the sibship structure on education years.Thirdly,observe changes,which has mentioned above,in different periods,in urban and rural.Then,considering individual’s education experience,explore the effect of sibship size has on educational transition rate of three stages:from elementary to junior high school, from junior high to high school and from high school to higher education.Lastly,we tackle endogeneity using the first-born child’s gender as the instrument variable of sibship size.The analyses come to four conclusions.First,on the whole,sibship size has a negative effect on education attainment,and there are differences between the male and female,women are more affected individuals,especially when young male siblings exist.Second,during the period with large-scale education expansion or emphasizing egalitariansm,the effect of sibship size on women’ education is small.Also,compared to urban residents, the economic conditions of rural households are worse,which bear greater economic budget constraints, then the sibship size has a larger negative effect on rural female’s education.Third,the effect that sibship size has on transition opportunity from elementary to junior high school is significantly negative,and differences exist between male and female groups.So is the next education stage,which transit from junior high school to high school.And under the background of traditional son preference,elder children(female)are more likely to sacrifice their education to support young children,especially the boy’s investment in education.The higher education’s transition rate has been largely increased after college expansion,but gender gap still exists in the effects of sibship size on educational attainment,which women suffer greater effects and larger disadvantage in education opportunities.Forth,considering endogeneity problem,the negative effect observed in OLS regression is greater than the true causal relation,and there is no obvious birth order effect in rural China before the implementation of one-child policy.