Is the 'Quarter of Birth' Endogenous? Evidence From One Million Siblings in Taiwan / Elliott Fan, Jin-Tan Liu, Yen-Chien Chen.

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Fan, Elliott

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TextSeries: Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) ; no. w20444.Publication details: Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2014.Description: 1 online resource: illustrations (black and white)Subject(s):

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Abstract: Recent studies based on US data have provided evidence to suggest that the 'quarter of birth' (QOB) may be endogenous and that the use of QOB as an instrumental variable will consequently produce inconsistent estimates (see Buckles and Hungerman, 2013). Such potential endogeneity is addressed in this study by estimating the effects of QOB on university attendance using a Taiwanese dataset on approximately one million siblings. Our estimations are mainly reliant upon the strength of the family fixed-effects model, a regression discontinuity design and a simulation procedure. Our results, in sharp contrast to the US findings, suggest that family background characteristics can explain very little of the relationship between QOB and the probability of university attendance at the age of 18. The disparity between the US and Taiwanese findings may be due to high-'socioeconomic status' (SES) women in the US disproportionately planning births away from the winter months, as suggested by Buckles and Hungerman (2013), whereas the seasonality of births is virtually identical for low- and high-SES mothers in Taiwan. Our findings imply that the endogeneity of QOB is of less concern in the case of Taiwan, perhaps due to the milder winter climate.

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Item type	Home library	Collection	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode	Item holds
Working Paper	Biblioteca Digital	Colección NBER	nber w20444 (Browse shelf(Opens below))	Not For Loan

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August 2014.

Recent studies based on US data have provided evidence to suggest that the 'quarter of birth' (QOB) may be endogenous and that the use of QOB as an instrumental variable will consequently produce inconsistent estimates (see Buckles and Hungerman, 2013). Such potential endogeneity is addressed in this study by estimating the effects of QOB on university attendance using a Taiwanese dataset on approximately one million siblings. Our estimations are mainly reliant upon the strength of the family fixed-effects model, a regression discontinuity design and a simulation procedure. Our results, in sharp contrast to the US findings, suggest that family background characteristics can explain very little of the relationship between QOB and the probability of university attendance at the age of 18. The disparity between the US and Taiwanese findings may be due to high-'socioeconomic status' (SES) women in the US disproportionately planning births away from the winter months, as suggested by Buckles and Hungerman (2013), whereas the seasonality of births is virtually identical for low- and high-SES mothers in Taiwan. Our findings imply that the endogeneity of QOB is of less concern in the case of Taiwan, perhaps due to the milder winter climate.