Weekly Seminar
Date
13.02.2017
Schedule
12:00PM
Location
Edificio Amigos Room M01
Speaker
Randeep Kaur (UT Austin)
Estimating the Role of Grandparents in Household Decisions: Evidence from Neonatal Outcomes in Multigenerational Households of India

Kaur is PhD candidate in Economics at the University of Texas Austin.

ABSTRACT: Despite the worldwide prevalence of multigenerational households, grandparents remain an understudied factor in household decisions. Using a change in household structure caused by the death of the last living grandparent, I show that the effect of grandparents on household decisions can be identified if one exploits the timing of those decisions relative to the death of the grandparent. Specifically, using data from India, I estimate the effects of grandparents on neonatal care decisions. Exploiting the variation in the timing of birth of grandchildren relative to the timing of death of the last living grandparent, I compare neonatal care decisions made for children born before and after the death. I find that children born after the death of the last living grandparent are 33-36 percent more likely to be immunized at birth and 5.6 percent more likely to be given colostrum (first breast milk produced by mothers). The findings of this paper emphasize the importance of grandparents in household decision-making, and have implications for technology diffusion and human capital development.
 
 
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