Child-Adoption Matching: Preferences for Gender and Race

Mariagiovanna Baccara, Allan Collard-Wexler, Leonardo Felli, Leeat Yariv

NBER Working Paper No. 16444
Issued in October 2010
NBER Program(s):   IO

This paper uses a new data set on child-adoption matching to estimate the preferences of potential adoptive parents over U.S.-born and unborn children relinquished for adoption. We identify significant preferences favoring girls and unborn children close to birth, and against African-American children put up for adoption. These attitudes vary in magnitudes across different adoptive parents – heterosexual, same-sex couples, and single women. We also consider the effects of excluding single women and same-sex couples from the adoption process. In our data, such policies would substantially reduce the overall number of adopted children and have a disproportionate effect on African-American ones.

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An online appendix is available for this publication.

This paper was revised on April 16, 2012

Acknowledgments

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