The Decision to Invest in Child Quality over Quantity : Household Size and Household Investment in Education in Vietnam

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-le...

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Main Authors:	Dang, Hai-Anh H., Rogers, F. Halsey
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	en_US
Published:	Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank 2017
Subjects:	EDUCATION DEMOGRAPHICS HOUSEHOLD SIZE CHILD LABOR FAMILY LABOR ENROLLMENT
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/27694

id	okr-10986-27694
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-276942021-05-25T10:54:42Z The Decision to Invest in Child Quality over Quantity : Household Size and Household Investment in Education in Vietnam Dang, Hai-Anh H. Rogers, F. Halsey EDUCATION DEMOGRAPHICS HOUSEHOLD SIZE CHILD LABOR FAMILY LABOR ENROLLMENT 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. 2017-08-09T20:57:13Z 2017-08-09T20:57:13Z 2016-01 Journal Article World Bank Economic Review 1564-698X http://hdl.handle.net/10986/27694 en_US CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo World Bank Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank Publications & Research :: Journal Article Publications & Research East Asia and Pacific Vietnam
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	en_US
topic	EDUCATION DEMOGRAPHICS HOUSEHOLD SIZE CHILD LABOR FAMILY LABOR ENROLLMENT
spellingShingle	EDUCATION DEMOGRAPHICS HOUSEHOLD SIZE CHILD LABOR FAMILY LABOR ENROLLMENT Dang, Hai-Anh H. Rogers, F. Halsey The Decision to Invest in Child Quality over Quantity : Household Size and Household Investment in Education in Vietnam
geographic_facet	East Asia and Pacific Vietnam
description	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.
format	Journal Article
author	Dang, Hai-Anh H. Rogers, F. Halsey
author_facet	Dang, Hai-Anh H. Rogers, F. Halsey
author_sort	Dang, Hai-Anh H.
title	The Decision to Invest in Child Quality over Quantity : Household Size and Household Investment in Education in Vietnam
title_short	The Decision to Invest in Child Quality over Quantity : Household Size and Household Investment in Education in Vietnam
title_full	The Decision to Invest in Child Quality over Quantity : Household Size and Household Investment in Education in Vietnam
title_fullStr	The Decision to Invest in Child Quality over Quantity : Household Size and Household Investment in Education in Vietnam
title_full_unstemmed	The Decision to Invest in Child Quality over Quantity : Household Size and Household Investment in Education in Vietnam
title_sort	decision to invest in child quality over quantity : household size and household investment in education in vietnam
publisher	Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank
publishDate	2017
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/27694
_version_	1764465913789153280

The Decision to Invest in Child Quality over Quantity : Household Size and Household Investment in Education in Vietnam

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