Risk, Network Quality, and Family Structure: Child Fostering Decisions in Burkina Faso
Risk, Network Quality, and Family Structure: Child Fostering Decisions in Burkina Faso
复制标题
风险、网络质量和家庭结构：布基纳法索的儿童寄养决策
DOI：
--
复制
发表时间：
2005
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Richard Akresh
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Richard Akresh
研究人员经常假设家庭结构是外生的，但儿童寄养，即父母将亲生子女送往另一个家庭生活的制度，在撒哈拉以南非洲地区很普遍，并提供了反对这一假设的证据。利用我在布基纳法索收集的数据，我分析了一个家庭通过寄养来调整其规模和构成的决定。如果家庭拥有良好的社会网络，则将抚养孩子作为应对外源收入冲击的风险应对机制，并满足家庭内部的劳动力需求。家庭的农业冲击、良好网络成员的百分比或年龄较大女孩的数量每增加一个标准差，将孩子送到高于当前寄养水平的概率分别增加 29.1%、30.0 和 34.5%。测试影响发送决策的因素是否对接收决策产生相反的影响会导致对儿童养育的对称理论模型的拒绝。
Researchers often assume household structure is exogenous, but child fostering, the institution in which parents send their biological children to live with another family, is widespread in sub-Saharan Africa and provides evidence against this assumption. Using data I collected in Burkina Faso, I analyze a household's decision to adjust its size and composition through fostering. A household fosters children as a risk-coping mechanism in response to exogenous income shocks, if it has a good social network, and to satisfy labor demands within the household. Increases of one standard deviation in a household's agricultural shock, percentage of good network members, or number of older girls increase the probability of sending a child above the current fostering level by 29.1, 30.0, and 34.5 percent, respectively. Testing whether factors influencing the sending decision have an opposite impact on the receiving decision leads to a rejection of the symmetric, theoretical model for child fostering.