The Response of Household Parental Investment to Child Endowments

Abstract

The theoretical and empirical literature on parental investment focuses on whether child-specific parental investments reinforce or compensate for a child's initial endowments. However, many parental investments, such as neighborhood quality and family size and structure, are shared wholly or in part among all children in a household. The empirical results of this paper imply that such household parental investments compensate for low endowments, as proxied by low birth weight.

Keywords: birth weight, child rearing, parenting, social status - health aspects, education - health aspects, economic indicators

JEL Classification: I20, I10