Sibling Rivalry, Residiential Rivalry, and Constraints on the Availability of Child Labor

Sibling rivalry occurs when siblings compete for parental investments. We examine how rivalry among biological siblings, who may not be co-resident, differs from rivalry among co-resident children and how this affects school enrollment for children in Burkina Faso. We test the hypothesis that the value of child labor in home production contributes to rivalry by comparing households that differ in their access to child fostering networks. Fostering moves child labor between residences, decoupling a child’s location from the value of their time. We find rivalry influences enrollment only in families who do not foster and are thus constrained in their ability to equalize child labor supply and demand. In those households, the relative productivity of resident children impacts time allocation decisions and subsequently enrollment. We find no evidence of rivalry in unconstrained households. Thus, sibling rivalry is better understood as residential rivalry, stemming from constraints on child labor availability.