13:30 - 15:00
Room: Auditorium #2
Parallel Sessions
Chair/s:
Vedran Lesic
Female Babies as a Determinant of Adult Risk-Aversion
Ganna Pogrebna 1, Andrew Oswald 2, David Haig 3
1 University of Warwick, Warwick Manufacturing Group, CV4 7AL, Coventry, United Kingdom
2 University of Warwick, Department of Economics, CV4 7AL, Coventry, United Kingdom
3 Harvard University, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, MA 02138, Cambridge, United States

Learning the sex of an unborn child is an exogenous ‘shock’. This paper uses that idea to explore the causal effect of child gender on parental attitudes to risk. The study collects before-and-after data from hospital paediatric wards. On a Holt-Laury criterion, the parents of daughters, whether unborn or recently born, are shown to be almost twice as risk-averse as parents of sons. The study demonstrates this in cross-sectional and longitudinal data. It offers evidence for fathers and mothers, for unborn and recently born children, and for a West European nation and an East European nation.

For a parent, learning the sex of an unborn child is an important and exogenous informational ‘shock’. It is also an event that can, in general, be accurately dated (usually to a single day). This paper exploits that as a form of natural experiment. As far as we are aware, this is the first study of its kind.

The analysis finds that parental attitudes to risk are shaped by the gender of their child. In a regression equation, the measured effect of child gender is, in these data, considerably larger than that of other influences upon adult risk-aversion. On a Holt-Laury criterion, the parents of daughters, whether unborn or recently born, are approximately twice as risk-averse as parents of sons. The child-gender effect is detectable before birth and for some months after birth (we cannot say for how long, because our data do not extend for many years after birth). It is also visible in parents of both sexes, which is one reason to suggest that it cannot have a single hormonal explanation. The study’s results seem potentially of importance to a range of scientific disciplines.

The pattern documented in the paper is not merely a cross-sectional phenomenon. In the longitudinal sub-sample, which is perhaps scientifically the most persuasive evidence, it is possible to check for ‘switching’ behaviour. That is what is observed in the data set: a within-person comparison reveals that parents alter their risk attitudes after they have been informed about the gender of their baby.


Reference:
We-S80-TT03-OC-004
Session:
New methods, new tools, new data in risk and resilience research II
Presenter/s:
Ganna Pogrebna
Presentation type:
Oral Communication
Room:
Auditorium #2
Chair/s:
Vedran Lesic
Date:
Wednesday, June 21st
Time:
14:15 - 14:30
Session times:
13:30 - 15:00