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Invitation • 08.05.2024BiB Population Research Series
The BiB invites you to the lecture series on May 15 from 11:00 to 12:15. Prof. Astrid Würtz Rasmussen presents her paper “The only child”.
Astrid Würtz Rasmussen is Professor of Economics at Aarhus University, Denmark. Her research focuses on fertility, preschools, schools, family structure, intergenerational spillovers, and having siblings. She published, e.g., in the American Economic Review, Review of Economic Studies, and Early Childhood Research Quarterly.
Abstract
We analyze the effect of fertility on children's school performance, wellbeing and personality traits, motivated by the theory of a quality-quantity trade-off in family size (Becker and Lewis, 1973). To establish causality, we use unique data on couples undergoing In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) treatments to obtain variation in family size that is independent of parental characteristics. Our primary focus is on couples who already have at least one child and are undergoing IVF to have another child. One significant advantage of our study is the ability to employ multiple identification strategies using the same data and population, allowing us to contrast our results with previous studies relying mainly on randomly occurring twin births. Our findings reveal that children without siblings, overall, do not demonstrate better outcomes compared to children with siblings. These results do not support the quality-quantity trade-off hypothesis, consistent with the existing literature.
Location
The event will take place on the 3rd floor of the BiB in presence and online as a Webex conference.
Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB)
Friedrich-Ebert-Allee 4
65189 Wiesbaden, Germany
Please contact us at prs@bib.bund.de to subscribe to the BiB PRS mailing list (subject: “subscribe”) or if you have any questions or would like to join us in person.
Online Access
Link: https://destatis.webex.com/meet/bibprs
Meeting ID Number: 2731 430 1678
Join via phone
+49-619-6781-9736
Access code: 2734 685 1551
Background
In our BiB Population Research Series, we address current topics in population research and in related disciplines. Scientists from Germany and abroad present results from their research work in English.