Sibling Sex Composition, Intrafamily Resource Allocation, and Educational Attainment: An explanation of educational gender inequality in China

已有研究发现,生育率下降带来的家庭子女数减少是缩小教育性别差异的重要原因。然而即使在给定的子女数量下,同胞性别结构的差异也会影响个人的教育获得,但是来自中国的相关研究却很少。本文在中国的父权制家庭文化背景下研究了同胞性别结构对家庭内部资源分配以及个人教育获得的影响。本文提出,受中国传统文化以及经济动机的影响,父母的儿子偏好导致家庭内部资源分配时偏向男孩,而抚养男孩和女孩的成本差异强化了这种家庭内部资源分配的不平等。基于全国代表性抽样数据的研究证实了本文的解释。研究发现,拥有兄弟不利于个人的教育获得,而同胞中女孩比例越高则越有利于个人的教育获得,这种影响存在着复杂的性别间的非对称性。同胞性别结构效应在不同社会经济地位以及户籍拥有者之间并不具有一致的变化规律,但其影响在不同出生队列之间却存在显著差异。

Recent studies show that the decreased sibsize within family due to the decline of fertility is the drive of narrowed educational gender gap. Given the same numbers of siblings, the sibling sex composition still affects the educational attainment. However, empirical study from China is limited. This paper explores the effect of sibling sex composition on intrafamily resource allocation and educational attainment in the context of patrilineal family structure in China. The author argues that, due to the son preference rooted from the traditional Chinese culture and economic motivation, parents favor boys over girls when making intrahousehold transfers. The gender difference in the costs of raising child would intensify such within-family gender inequality. Empirical evidences from CGSS2008 support such hypotheses. The author finds that having brother(s) in the sibship negatively affects one's educational attainment and the higher level of an individual's educational attainment concurs with the higher ratio of girls in a sibship. The effect of sibling sex composition is asymmetric between genders in a complex way and also varies by the Social-economic and household registration statuses of household, though not consistent. Finally, the sibling sex composition affects the educational attainments of different cohorts differently.

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