Exploring endogeneity of month-of-birth – evidence from a million siblings in Taiwan
2013/11/05
研討會日期 : 2013-11-05
時間 : 14:30
主講人 : Professor Elliott Fan
地點 : Conference Room B110
演講者簡介 : Professor Elliott Fan received his Ph.D. in Economics from University of Toronto in 2006. He is currently Assistant Professor of Economics at National Taiwan University. His research fields are the Evaluating impacts of public social security programs, Household joint decisions, Dynamics of retirement decisions, Income transfers and living standard of immigrants, Mandatory military services and demographic changes.
演講摘要 : Recent studies have provided evidence suggesting that quarter of birth (QOB) may be endogenous. Using QOB as an instrumental variable, therefore, produces inconsistent estimates. In this study we examine the potential endogeneity of month of birth (MOB) using a data set that contains more than a million siblings in Taiwan, where parents hold a strong belief in credentialism and are more likely than western parents to manipulate children’s birth months for their educational advantages. To conduct the examination, we estimate the effect of MOB on university attendance using a family fixed-effects model, a regression-discontinuity design, and a statistical model developed by ourselves. Our results suggest that family background characteristics explain little of the relationship between MOB and university attendance. Our findings are in sharp contrast with the American evidence provided by Buckle and Hungerman (2013) who find that seasonality in maternal characteristics in the US is driven by high-socioeconomic status women disproportionately planning births away from winter.
