Birth Order, Child Labor and Schooling: Theory and Evidence from Cameroon

Abstract This paper examines determinants of child labor and schooling with a special emphasis on birth order and sibling age structure. We present a theoretical model accounting for the dynamics of birth order and its interaction with credit constraints. We show that poor -credit-constrained -parents send their elder children to work relatively more. Since …rst borns are the only available source of additional income when constraints on resources become more binding, they work more and end up with a lower level of human capital compared to their younger siblings. On the other hand, wealthier parents do not discriminate between their children on the basis of birth order. We test these predictions on the 2001 Cameroon Household Survey database. Controlling for household …xed e¤ects, gender and age, our results con…rm that later-born children's educational levels are relatively higher. Wealthier households do not make use of birth order to discriminate between children's education levels. These results are robust to various measures of the birth order. JEL Classi…cations: C23, D13, I29, O1