Parental Investments and Intra-household Inequality in Child Human Capital: Evidence from a Survey Experiment
中文摘要
在发展中国家,家庭内部不平等解释了儿童人力资本变异的40%。我研究父母的投资如何促成这种不平等。为缓解观测性数据带来的识别问题,我设计了一项针对印度父母的调查实验,借此识别关于人力资本生产函数的信念、对结果不平等的偏好以及资源的作用。我发现投资由效率考量驱动:由于父母将投资与能力视为互补,他们会更多地投资于成绩更高的孩子,在资源受约束时尤其如此。模拟结果表明,干预会通过父母的反应产生家庭内部的分配影响。
Abstract
Intra-household inequality explains 40% of child human capital variation in the developing world. I study how parents’ investment contributes to this inequality. To mitigate the identification problem posed by observational data, I design a survey experiment with parents in India that allows me to identify beliefs about the human capital production function, preferences for inequality in outcomes and the role of resources. I find that investments are driven by efficiency considerations: as parents perceive investment and ability as complements, they invest more in higher-achieving children and more so when constrained. Simulations indicate that interventions have intra-household distributional impacts through parental responses.