Birth Spacing, Fertility Selection and Child Survival: Analysis Using a Correlated Hazard Model

42 Pages Posted: 12 Jul 2007

See all articles by Pushkar Maitra

Pushkar Maitra

Monash University - Department of Economics

Sarmistha Pal

University of Surrey; IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Date Written: June 2007

Abstract

If fertility reflects the choice of households, results of their choice (duration between successive births and health of the children) cannot be considered to be randomly determined. While most existing studies of child health tend to overlook the effects of fertility selection on child health, this paper argues that not accounting for this selection issue yields biased estimates. Additionally it is difficult to a priori predict the direction of this bias, thereby over or under estimating the effect of spacing on child survival. We find that the estimates of birth spacing on child mortality are different when we do not account for fertility selection. Additionally the correlated hazard estimates that we present here better fit our samples than the corresponding bivariate probit estimates used in the literature. A comparison of the fertility behaviour of households in the Indian and Pakistani Punjab highlights the differential nature of institutions on demographic transition in these neighbouring regions.

Keywords: child mortality, fertility selection, correlated recursive hazard system

JEL Classification: J13, O10, C41, C24

Suggested Citation

Maitra, Pushkar and Pal, Sarmistha, Birth Spacing, Fertility Selection and Child Survival: Analysis Using a Correlated Hazard Model (June 2007). IZA Discussion Paper No. 2878, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=999374 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.999374

Pushkar Maitra

Monash University - Department of Economics ( email )

Wellington Road
Clayton, Victoria 3
Australia
61 3 9905 5832 (Phone)
61 3 9905 5476 (Fax)

Sarmistha Pal (Contact Author)

University of Surrey ( email )

Stag Hill
Guildford, England GU2 7XH
United Kingdom
01483 683995 (Phone)

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

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