Quantity–Quality Trade-Off and Early Childhood Development in Rural Family: Evidence from China’s Guizhou Province

Abstract

This paper empirically investigates the causal effect of having siblings on the cognitive, language, motor, and social-emotional skills of infants under the age of 2 in rural families in Guizhou Province in China. The results are based on data from a survey conducted in 2017. To effectively relieve the endogeneity induced by selection bias, we applied the matching-smoothing (MS) method to evaluate the effects of having siblings. The results show that, first, having siblings produces significant negative impacts on an infant’s cognitive, language, and social-emotional skills; second, intrahousehold resource allocation is the mechanism behind the Quantity–Quality (Q–Q) trade-off, and it exerts its effects through two key identified channels—the home environment and parental warmth. By spreading the parents’ investment among siblings in terms of both the home environment and parental warmth, having siblings hinders infants’ early development. Our findings provide new evidence for the relation between the Q–Q trade-off and early childhood development in rural families in western China.

Relationships between Parenting Skills and Early Childhood Development in Rural Households in Western China

“…Given the nature of social-emotional skills having greater malleability compared to cognitive skills [30], and that they exert more lasting effects on one's lifetime outcomes [29], the findings of this paper show that the caregiver's parenting skills during the early stages of childhood could be critical to his/her future achievements in the long term. Furthermore, the findings are also consistent with the evidence found by previous studies on the effects of family income [32,33] and children quantity [34] on the child's development.…”

“…In terms of children quantity, in Chinese rural households, having siblings exerts negative and significant impacts on a child's early development, by spreading the parental investments among children [34]. Our findings suggest that more children in the household might destroy the relationships between parenting skills and cognitive development of children who have siblings, which is also detrimental to their future performances.…”

“…This might restrain child development [32,33]. Similarly, having siblings might spread the parental investments, which in turn, may hinder child development [34]. In such households, only improving the parenting skills might not substantially foster the development outcomes that are highly correlated with parental investments.…”

The sibling effect on neurodevelopment of preschoolers under China’s newly relaxed child policy: A national retrospective cohort study

“…That is, the negative effect of divided resources of siblings would reveal when the disadvantage of parents’ lower SES could not be fully modified. The findings provide a probable explanation for the inconsistent outcomes from previous studies in rural ( Zhong et al, 2019 ) and urban ( Wu et al, 2022 ) China.…”

Sibship Size, Height and Cohort Selection: A Methodological Approach

“…Apart from the BOI, we included in our model a dummy variable that aims to capture whether or not both parents were alive in the census year of 1890. We considered it essential to control for the parental circumstances due to the importance of parental resources in relation to child development [69,70]. These resources involve material goods, such as providing food for their growth and development, and non-material Apart from the BOI, we included in our model a dummy variable that aims to capture whether or not both parents were alive in the census year of 1890.…”