Browsing by Subject "restricted models"

New attention has been put on the theoretical ambiguity of the quantity-quality model of fertility in terms of the sign of the marginal effects of additional children, and recent evidence from developed countries suggests that linearly restricted empirical models may not detect the effect of family size on children’s outcomes when the marginal effects of family size are allowed to vary in sign and magnitude. This thesis uses both linearly restricted and unrestricted models with data from Vietnam to provide evidence on marginal effects of family size on children’s anthropometric and cognitive outcomes from developing country context. The effect of family size on children’s health outcomes using instrumental variable strategy based on the sex-composition of the first two children is estimated. Additionally, the extent that birth order explains association between family size and child outcomes is examined. A statistically significant negative association between family size and children's height-for-age, weight-for-age and cognitive skills at early and early-intermediate ages in Vietnam is found. The results suggest that the marginal effects of family size are not constant by parity of family size and that birth order explains some but not fully the found association between family size and children's health. The results from instrumental variable estimations based on child sex composition of the causal effect of family size are generally uninformative.