PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Ronni Pavan
TI  - On the Production of Skills and the Birth-Order Effect
AID  - 10.3368/jhr.51.3.0913-5920R
DP  - 2016 Aug 01
TA  - Journal of Human Resources
PG  - 699--726
VI  - 51
IP  - 3
4099  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/51/3/699.short
4100  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/51/3/699.full
SO  - J Hum Resour2016 Aug 01; 51
AB  - First-born children tend to outperform their younger siblings on measures such as cognitive exams, wages, educational attainment, and employment. Using a framework similar to Cunha and Heckman (2008) and Cunha, Heckman, and Schennach (2010), this paper finds that differences in parents’ investments across siblings can account for more than one-half of the gap in cognitive skills among siblings. The study’s framework accommodates for endogeneity in parents’ investments, measurement error, missing observations, and dynamic impacts of parental investments.