2022/11/22 by Xiaoxu, Zhu, kecai, Fan, hai, He +1
#FOS: Economics and business #General Economics (econ.GN)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2211.11968
More children in Shandong Province are stunted than any other province in China. Data on more than 122,000 children show a dramatic increase in height advantage with birth order in Shandong relative to the average of other provinces. We suggest that the steep birth order gradient in Shandong is due to a preference for the eldest child, which influences parental fertility decisions and resource allocation to children. We show that within Shandong province, the gradient is steeper for regions and cultures with a high preference for the eldest child. As predicted, this gradient also varies with the sex of the sibling. By back-calculating, the steeper birth order gradient in Shandong Province explains more than half of the average height gap between Shandong Province and the rest of China.