AME Labour Economics-seminarium i arbetsmarknadsekonomi vid Institutet för social forskning (SOFI).

Alessandro Toppeta från UCL presenterar "Skill Formation with Siblings".

Detta seminarium hålls på plats, det går inte att delta via länk.

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Abstract

This paper studies how skills are formed during childhood in families where children grow up with at least one sibling. I use data from the Millennium Cohort Study on the frequency of quality interactions between siblings, such as experiencing enjoyable time together, to measure the bond formed between them. This allows me to open the black box of sibling spillovers and present evidence that differences in the quality of the sibling bond are associated with persistent inequalities across households in the United Kingdom. I document a socio-economic gradient in the quality of the sibling bond and show that a stronger sibling bond at age 5 predicts better developmental, educational and health outcomes across adolescence. Building on this motivating evidence, I formalize the joint production of skills in families with siblings and structurally estimate the contribution of the sibling bond and parental investment to the formation of the younger and older sibling's skills. The structural estimates of the skill formation technology show that a high-quality bond between siblings matters over and beyond parental investment, contributing to the younger as well as the older sibling's development.