Fertility, Sibling Spacing, and Adolescent Exposure to Young Children

Abstract

Using six waves of data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) we construct a cross-sectional data set composed of the adult children of the HRS respondents. We use this cross-sectional data set to analyze how being exposed to children during one’s adolescent years impacts the number of children people choose to have. For younger siblings we measure their exposure to young children by the number of nieces and nephews they have from older siblings (older by some margin). For older siblings we measure their exposure to young children by the number of younger siblings they have (that are younger by some margin). Our findings suggest that adolescent exposure to young children decreases the number of children that people have. We also find that people with older siblings have more children as the age gap increases between them and their older siblings. (J1, J13)