The Decision to Invest in Child Quality over Quantity: Household Size and Household Investment in Education in Vietnam
نویسندگان
چکیده
During Vietnam’s two decades of rapid economic growth, its fertility rate has fallen sharply at the same time that its educational attainment has risen rapidly—macro trends that are consistent with the hypothesis of a quantity-quality tradeoff in child-rearing. We investigate whether the micro-level evidence supports the hypothesis that Vietnamese parents are in fact making a tradeoff between quantity and “quality” of children. We present private tutoring—a widespread education phenomenon in Vietnam—as a new measure of household investment in children’s quality, combining it with traditional measures of household education investments. To assess the quantity-quality tradeoff, we instrument for family size using the commune distance to the nearest family planning center. Our IV estimation results based on data from the Vietnam Household Living Standards Surveys (VHLSSs) and other sources show that rural families do indeed invest less in the education of school-age children who have larger numbers of siblings. This effect holds for several different indicators of educational investment and is robust to different definitions of family size, identification strategies, and model specifications that control for community characteristics as well as the distance to the city center. Finally, our estimation results suggest that private tutoring may be a better measure of quality-oriented household investments in education than traditional measures like enrollment, which are arguably less nuanced and less household-driven. JEL: I22, I28, J13, O15, O53, P36
منابع مشابه
Evaluation of the Factor Affecting on Education Expenditure (Tobit Model Approach)
One of the main goals of many households is to improve the quality of their children by increasing their education expenditure. This study investigates the factors affecting on education expenditure as measure of quality of children by using the Households’ Income and Expenditure survey dataset over 2010-2014 and utilizing Tobit models. The result of Tobit shows that with addition of one perso...
متن کاملThe Effect of Socioeconomic Factors on Household Health Expenditures: Heckman Two-Step Method
Background and Aim: Due to the high level of out-of-pocket payments for health expenditures and the importance of household health expenditure management, this study aimed to investigate socioeconomic factors affecting Iranian urban households’ health expenditures. Materials and Methods: This descriptive-analytic and applied study was conducted cross-sectionally at national level with microeco...
متن کاملThe impact of children’s entry to labor market on health expenditures of urban household
Child labor is regarded as an ambiguous and controversial challenge encountered in majority of countries across the world. Given the incidence and prevalence of this phenomenon in Iran and the importance of household health expenditures, this study was done to evaluate the impact of children’s entry into labor market on household health expenditures. This study was conducted on urban households...
متن کاملChild Ability and Household Human Capital Investment Decisions in Burkina Faso
Using unique data collected by the authors in rural Burkina Faso, we examine how children’s cognitive ability influences a resource constrained household’s decision to invest in their education. We use a direct measure of child ability for all primary school-aged children, regardless of current school enrollment. We explicitly incorporate direct measures of the ability of each child’s siblings ...
متن کاملFactors Influencing Rural Livelihood Diversification Activities among Women in Northern Region of Ghana
Livelihood sustainability remains a major challenge for rural households in Northern Ghana. Although farming has traditionally been the core livelihood strategy for most households, diversifying into non-farm activities remains a common livelihood strategy employed to sustain household basic needs, particularly for women, who because of their gender often face challenges in accessing land for f...
متن کاملذخیره در منابع من
با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید
عنوان ژورنال:
دوره شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 2016