Family Size and Children's Education in Brazil

描述（由申请人提供）：长期以来，家庭规模一直是父母及其子女当前和未来前景的晴雨表，但随着时间和社会的发展，大家庭或小家庭对孩子的影响已经发生了很大的变化。当大家庭关系牢固，孩子可以为家庭提供经济资源时，大家庭不一定对所有孩子都不利。随着经济的发展和教育回报的增加，父母从有很多孩子中获得的好处与有很多兄弟姐妹的青少年在教育上面临的劣势越来越不一致。这种紧张关系在巴西等快速崛起的经济体中表现得淋漓尽致，凸显了这些国家面临的具有挑战性的教育差距。因此，本项目将研究巴西家庭规模与青少年教育之间的联系，与美国关于这一主题的文献进行有价值的对比，并扩展最近的研究，挑战长期以来的结论，即拥有一个大家庭与投资儿童教育之间存在直接权衡。虽然早期的实证文献普遍证实了家庭规模与儿童教育负相关的理论预测，但最近的一系列研究从概念和方法的角度对这些发现的同质性提出了质疑。由于巴西在过去几十年里在社会条件、生育制度和教育方面经历了令人难以置信的时间和地区差异，这个国家提供了一个很好的机会来整理关于家庭规模如何预测儿童教育的相互矛盾的证据。巴西还提供具有全国代表性的高质量数据，涵盖人口转型的大部分年份以及该国所经历的社会经济条件的巨大变化。本项目通过考察巴西的历史、地区和性别差异，扩展了先前关于家庭规模与儿童教育之间关系的研究，同时解决了最近在文献中引起关注的关于教育和家庭规模共同决定的方法问题。为了实现这一目标，我们将使用32年的全国代表性数据PNAD（1977- 2009）来实施双胞胎和同性兄弟姐妹的工具变量方法。这项研究很重要，因为了解家庭规模对青少年教育的影响是否以及如何随着社会、人口和经济背景的不同而变化，是解决社会机会不平等问题的第一步，这对巴西这个世界上最不平等的国家之一尤其重要。这一项目与公共卫生的关系还来自确凿的证据，即儿童教育水平的提高提高了人口保健的社会能力，在减轻社会一级健康问题的负担和改善个人生活质量方面都有可观的回报。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Family size has long been a barometer of the current and future prospects of parents and their children, but the implications of living in a large or small family for children have evolved considerably over time and across societies. When extended family ties are strong and children can provide financial resources to the household, a large family may not necessarily imply disadvantages for all children. With economic development and increasing returns to education, the benefits parents accrue from having many children become increasingly at odds with the educational disadvantages faced by adolescents with many siblings. This tension is vividly seen in rapidly emerging economies such as Brazil, and highlights the challenging educational gaps faced by such countries. This project, therefore, will examine the links between family size and adolescent education in Brazil, providing a valuable contrast to the U.S.-based literature on this topic, and extending recent research that challenges the long-standing conclusion that there is a direct tradeoff between having a large family and investing in children's schooling. While the early empirical literature has generally confirmed the theoretical prediction that family size is negatively related to children's education, a recent stream of research has cast doubt on the homogeneity of these findings on conceptual and methodological grounds. Because of the incredible temporal and regional variation in social conditions, fertility regimes, and education Brazil has experienced over the last decades, the country offers an excellent opportunity to sort out the conflicting evidence on how family size predicts children's education. Brazil also offers high-quality nationally representative data that cover most of the years of the demographic transition as well as the dramatic changes in socio-economic conditions the country has experienced. This project extends previous research on the connections between family size and children's education by examining historical, regional, and gender variation in the case of Brazil, while at the same time addressing methodological concerns about the joint determination of education and family size that have recently gained traction in the literature. To accomplish this goal, we will implement twins and same-sex siblings' instrumental variable approaches using 32 years of nationally representative data, the PNAD (1977- 2009). This research is important because understanding whether and how the effect of family size on adolescent education varies by social, demographic and economic context is the first step toward addressing broader inequalities in social opportunities, a concern of particular relevance for Brazil, one of the most unequal countries in the world. The public health relevance of this project also comes from well-established evidence that rising children's educational levels improve social capacity for population health with substantial payoffs both in terms of reducing the burden of health problems at the societal level and in improving the quality of life of individuals. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: This project examines disparities in education associated with fertility and family configuration, covering a lengthy period of time that encompasses the largest part of the fertility transition and important socio-economic changes Brazil has witnessed. Such research is important because it provides evidence of how changes in fertility and family size are linked to changes in population health via an important social mechanism, education. Such research is also high in policy relevance, given that stratification starts early in life and that understanding the roots of educational disparities is fundamental to policies focusing on building population's social capacity, with well-documented positive implications for the health of individuals and societies. The public health relevance of this project also comes from well-established evidence that rising children's educational levels improves social capacity for population health with substantial payoffs both in terms of reducing the burden of health problems at the societal level and in improving the quality of life of individuals.