ABSTRACT

Child survival depends on the allocation of resources within the household. The size and composition of the sibling set influences parental division of resources and can in turn affect survival chances. In spite of recent advances in research on sibling effects, previous studies have often used the resource dilution hypothesis, which neglects the specific historical context which shapes household structure and organisation. This study therefore focuses specifically on the variation in historical context by examining sibling effects on infant and child mortality in three regions of the Netherlands in the period 1863–1910. It does so by connecting the gendered and the conditional resource-dilution model with each other as a conceptual framework. Changing household composition is taken into account by using longitudinal data from the Historical Sample of the Netherlands, time-varying variables and Cox proportional-hazard models to study sibling size and composition. The results show that the number and gender of siblings play an important role in determining child mortality, but are less significant in determining infant mortality. The number of same-sex siblings has a negative impact on boys’ survival chances in the Netherlands, which suggests that after the age of one, boys experienced more competition from their brothers. The reason for this could be their assigned roles within the household and on the family farm. A negative influence of the number of sisters is only found for child mortality chances for girls in the nuclear northwest family region. Here, fewer children were needed to work inside or outside the household, and girls and boys may even have been interchangeable. The results underscore the importance of looking at the interaction between the specific historical context and gender when trying to understand how sibship size and composition influenced children’s mortality risks and shaped inequality within the household.

摘要

儿童的生存取决于家庭内部资源的分配。同级集的大小和组成会影响父母对资源的划分，进而会影响生存机会。尽管最近在兄弟姐妹效应研究方面取得了进展，但以前的研究经常使用资源稀释假设，而忽略了塑造家庭结构和组织的特定历史背景。因此，本研究通过考察1863-1910年间荷兰三个地区对婴儿和儿童死亡率的同级影响来专门研究历史背景的变化。它通过将性别化和有条件的资源稀释模型相互连接在一起作为概念框架来做到这一点。通过使用荷兰历史样本的纵向数据，时变变量和Cox比例风险模型来研究同胞的大小和组成，可以考虑到家庭构成的变化。结果表明，兄弟姐妹的数量和性别在确定儿童死亡率方面起着重要作用，而在确定婴儿死亡率方面则不那么重要。同性同胞的数量对荷兰男孩的生存机会有负面影响，这表明，一岁以后，男孩经历了来自兄弟姐妹的更多竞争。原因可能是他们在家庭内部和家庭农场中分配的角色。仅在西北核家庭地区，对女孩的死亡率而言，发现姐妹数量的负面影响。这里，在家庭内部或外部工作所需的儿童更少，而且女孩和男孩甚至可以互换。结果强调了在试图了解同胞的人数和组成如何影响儿童的死亡风险和家庭内部不平等现象时，考虑特定历史背景和性别之间相互作用的重要性。