Am I my Brother's Keeper? Sibling Spillover Effects: The Case of Developmental Disabilities and Externalizing Behavior

Jason Fletcher, Nicole L. Hair, Barbara L. Wolfe

NBER Working Paper No. 18279
Issued in August 2012
NBER Program(s):   CH   HE

Using a sample of sibling pairs from the PSID-CDS, we examine the effects of sibling health status on early educational outcomes. We find that sibling developmental disability and externalizing behavior ar associated with reductions in math and language achievement Estimated spillovers for developmental disability are large and robust to both a rich set of family-level controls and a fixed effects analysis that exploits the availability of in-sample cousins. Our results suggest the importance of siblings in the determination of children's human capital as well as the potential for typically uncounted benefits to improving children's health through family multiplier effects

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Acknowledgments

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