Parental Investment, Equality Among Siblings, and the Child Penalty

How do parents trade off investments into their children against their own opportunities? I study the case of parental investment into siblings, because parents are generally concerned with equality among their offspring. If parents want to maintain equality of investment, they must increase their total investment for each new child, since not all resources can be shared among siblings, and they may have to sacrifice some of their own opportunities to do so. First, I reinforce evidence that siblings mostly do receive similar amounts of indirect investment, measured as the home environment, for the early, and thus most crucial, stages of their childhood development. Only in early adolescence (ages 10-15) do substantial differences emerge, in which first- and earlier-born siblings receive more investment. Second, I argue that this provides an important window into the inner workings of the family, and interpret these findings as suggesting that those resources that can be shared between siblings appear to be readily shared, while for those resources that are competitive and not easily shared, parents increase their overall investment in trying to provide siblings with equal opportunities. I provide suggestive evidence for this. Finally, I extend the analysis by linking it to the literature on child penalties and estimate motherhood penalties in employment and paid hours worked to argue that childcare demands and preferences for equality among their children may explain how parents, especially mothers, manage to increase their total investment by sacrificing their own labor market participation, leisure, and consumption for their children. Ultimately this can lead to continued gender inequalities in labor market opportunities and household work.