Peer-reviewed article
Number of children in a household and child well-being
Gilbert Brenes Camacho ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-sonnet-5-5This analysis looks at how the number of children in a household relates to three aspects of child well-being: harsh discipline, mild discipline and child labour. It uses Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) data from 24 countries grouped into four regions. Households with more children had higher odds of children working and of children being harshly disciplined. The link with mild discipline was weak. Countries with higher fertility also tended to have more children working or being harshly disciplined.
Key points
- The study compares three measures: harsh discipline, mild discipline and child labour.
- It uses logistic regressions on MICS datasets from 24 nations grouped into four regions.
- At the household level, more children are linked to higher odds of children working.
- At the household level, more children are linked to higher odds of harsh discipline, but the link with mild discipline is weak.
- Countries with higher fertility have higher proportions of children working or being harshly disciplined.
Limitations
The abstract does not name the 24 countries, so the country hint (CR) could not be confirmed and no countries are listed. The associations come from survey data and do not show that household size causes these outcomes.
Abstract
The quantity/quality tradeoff argument in explaining fertility decline has focused on the association between more education among children and fewer siblings. Human capital formation is also related to other dimensions of well-being. The goal of this analysis is to perform cross-national comparisons on the association between the number of children in a household and three measures related to child well-being: being harshly disciplined, mildly disciplined and child labor. The analysis is based on logistic regressions estimated using the Multiple Indicators Cluster Survey (MICS) datasets of 24 nations grouped into four regions. At the micro level, there is a direct association between families having more children and both the odds of children working and the odds of children being harshly disciplined, but the association is weak for mild discipline. In general, the associations found at the micro level reflect the findings that countries with higher fertility have also higher proportions of children working or being harshly disciplined.