TY - JOUR
T1 - Sons or daughters? Sex preferences and the reversal of the gender educational gap
AU - Hazan, Moshe
AU - Zoabi, Hosny
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2015 Université catholique de Louvain.
PY - 2015
Y1 - 2015
N2 - We provide a new explanation for the narrowing and reversal of the gender education gap. We assume that parents maximize the full income of their children and that males have an additional income, independently of education. This additional income biases preferences toward sons and implies that females have relative advantage in producing income through education. When the returns to human capital are low, the bias toward sons is high, so that parents whose first newborns are females have more children. Consequently, daughters are born to larger families and hence receive less education. As returns to human capital increase, gender differences in producing income diminish, bias toward sons declines, variation in family size falls and the positive correlation between family size and the number of daughters is weakened. Ultimately, the relative advantage of females in education dominates differences in family size, triggering the reversal in the gender education gap.
AB - We provide a new explanation for the narrowing and reversal of the gender education gap. We assume that parents maximize the full income of their children and that males have an additional income, independently of education. This additional income biases preferences toward sons and implies that females have relative advantage in producing income through education. When the returns to human capital are low, the bias toward sons is high, so that parents whose first newborns are females have more children. Consequently, daughters are born to larger families and hence receive less education. As returns to human capital increase, gender differences in producing income diminish, bias toward sons declines, variation in family size falls and the positive correlation between family size and the number of daughters is weakened. Ultimately, the relative advantage of females in education dominates differences in family size, triggering the reversal in the gender education gap.
KW - fertility
KW - gender educational gap
KW - returns to human capital
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84994669346&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1017/dem.2014.12
DO - 10.1017/dem.2014.12
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84994669346
SN - 2054-0892
VL - 81
SP - 179
EP - 201
JO - Journal of Demographic Economics
JF - Journal of Demographic Economics
IS - 2
ER -