Big Sisters

Published in Journal of Human Resources, 2025

Abstract

We model household investments in young children when parents and older siblings share caregiving responsibilities and investments by older siblings contribute to young children’s human capital accumulation. To test the predictions of our model, we estimate the impact of having an older sister (as opposed to an older brother) on early childhood development in a sample of rural Kenyan households with otherwise similar family structures. Having an older sister rather than an older brother improves younger siblings’ vocabulary and fine motor skills by more than 0.1 standard deviations.

Other versions

Link to published paper in the Journal of Human Resources

Previous versions: appeared as World Bank WPS 9454, October 2020 and as CGD Working Paper 559, October 2020

Joint with Pamela Jakiela, Lia C. H. Fernald, and Heather A. Knauer.

Data

Data and analysis files: (hosted at the Harvard Dataverse)

Media

Coverage in The Telegraph, NPR Morning Edition, NPR Goats and Soda, TODAY, Yahoo

Blog at CGD: Doing Well in Life? Thank Your Big Sister

Other information

JEL codes: O12, J13, J16, D13

Recommended citation: Jakiela, Pamela, Owen Ozier, Lia C. H. Fernald, and Heather A. Knauer. "Big Sisters." Journal of Human Resources (2025) DOI 10.3368/jhr.0623-12969R1

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3368/jhr.0623-12969R1