Dunaway Lecture
Professor Sandra E. Black
Audre and Bernard Rapoport Centennial Chair in Economics and Public Policy
The University of Texas at Austin
will present
Family Matters: The Role of Birth Order on Children's Outcomes
Tuesday, April 16, 2019 at 6:00 pm
109 South Kedzie Hall (368 Farm Lane)
Abstract
What determines a child’s success? We know that family matters — children from higher socioeconomic status (SES) families do better in school, get more education, and earn more. However, even beyond that, there is substantial variation in success within families. One dimension along which outcomes vary is birth order. My research uses large administrative datasets to demonstrate the relationship between birth order and longer-run outcomes of children, including IQ, education, income, health, and personality. It also explores possible explanations for these relationships, including the role of biology and parental investment behavior.
Bio
Sandra E. Black holds the Audre and Bernard Rapoport Centennial Chair in Economics and Public Affairs and is a Professor of Economics. She received her B.A. from UC Berkeley and her Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University. Since that time, she worked as an Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and an Assistant, Associate, and ultimately Professor in the Department of Economics at UCLA before arriving at the University of Texas, Austin in 2010. She is currently a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a Research Affiliate at IZA, and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at Brookings Institution. She served as a Member of Obama's Council of Economic Advisers from August 2015-January 2017. Her research focuses on the role of early life experiences on the long-run outcomes of children, as well as issues of gender and discrimination.
