TY  - GEN
AB  - This study sheds light on differences in the frequency of mother-child activities during the
children’s early life stages. Using data on children aged 2-3 and 5-6 from the German Socio-
Economic Panel (SOEP), we answer two questions: (i) To what extent does the frequency of
activities vary between families? (ii) What changes in the frequency of activities occur for
each child with the birth of a new sibling? Our results indicate that (i) The frequency with
which mothers engage in activities is affected by the combined effects of the number of siblings,
children’s sex, and birth order. In particular, as sibship size increases, mothers undertake
more activities with firstborn than with middle, younger, and even only children. (ii)
Children who already have a younger sibling receive an attention boost through the birth of a
new sibling, while others experience a reallocation of activities. To account for these results,
we go beyond the resource dilution hypothesis and offer an alternative explanation which assumes
either an increase of efficiency in time spent in maternal activities or a spillover effect
of other siblings on the overall level of activity with increasing sibship size.
DA  - 2012
KW  - sibship size
KW  - birth order
KW  - resource dilution
KW  - Sibling inequality
KW  - maternal time allocation
LA  - eng
PY  - 2012
SN  - 2193-9624
TI  - Resource Dilution or Resource Augmentation? Number of Siblings, Birth Order, Sex of the Child and Frequency of Mother’s Activities with Preschool Children
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0070-pub-25421951
Y2  - 2024-11-22T09:58:55
ER  -