Volume 28, Number 4 (Fall) 1993
Parish, William L., and Robert J. Willis. 1993. "Daughters, Education, and Family Budgets: Taiwan Experiences,." Journal of Human Resources 28(4):863-898.
Growth in the education of the labor force is one of the most important determinants of economic growth, and the distribution by sex is a key determinant of gender inequality. In this paper, we examine how parents choose to invest in sons' versus daughters' education and the consequences of these choices for women's life chances. We explore this issue with retrospective data on the life cycle and family behavior of Taiwanese individuals who came of age from the 1940s onward. Since the lives of these cohorts encompass one of the most rapid economic and demographic transitions in history, evidence from their experience is of particular value in sorting out alternative hypotheses. Broadly, while contradicting crude forms of East Asian models of patriarchal families, our findings support economics models of the family in which attempts by altruistic parents to finance optimal investments in their children's human capital are frustrated by credit constraints. We find that early-born children in large families do particularly poorly, especially if they are female and can, hence, marry early. In poor families and in older cohorts, older sisters help increase the education of younger siblings of both sexes. However, in more recent periods and among more affluent families there is less need for one child to sacrifice for another and the effects of family size and gender composition are markedly weaker. From international and historical comparisons, we conclude that patterns of behavior observed during Taiwan's economic development may apply broadly around the developed world.
William L. Parish is a professor of sociology and Robert J. Willis is a professor of education and public policy at the University of Chicago. Both are researchers at NORC. This research benefitted enormously by collaboration with Professors Ching-hsi Chang and Ying-chuan Liu, Economics Department, National Taiwan University and Ching-lung Tsay, Economics Institute, Academia Sinica, Taipei. Woody Carter, NORC, Chicago, provided skillful survey guidance. In Chicago, Suk Chung Han, Ling-xin Hao, Alfred Ke-wei Hu, Nidhi Mehrotra, and Fang-lu Wang provided careful data analysis. The authors are also grateful to Angus Deaton, Claudia Goldin, Susan Greenhalgh, and an anonymous referee for extensive comments on earlier versions of this paper. Funding was from NICHD, RO1 HD23322-01; the National Science Council, Republic of China; the Chiang Ching Kuo Foundation, Taipei; and the Social Statistics Office, Ministry of Interior, Republic of China. Errors in this report remain the responsibility of its two authors. This paper was written for the Conference on Women's Human Capital and Development, May 18-22, 1992, Bellagio, Italy. The data used in this article can be obtained from June 1994 through June 1997 from the authors at the following address: ERC/NORC, University of Chicago,1155 East 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637.
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