TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Gong, Xiaodong
AU  - Soest, Arthur van
AU  - Zhang, Ping
        TI  - Sexual Bias and Household Consumption: A Semiparametric Analysis of Engel Curves in Rural China
        PY  - 2000/Nov/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 212
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp212
        AB  - We analyze Engel curves for nuclear households in rural China. The sample includes more than 5000 nuclear families covering nineteen out of thirty Chinese provinces. We consider expenditures on food, also subdivided into several food subcategories such as cereals, or meat and fish, and other consumption categories such as alcohol and tobacco, medical, and educational goods. We use the semiparametric partially linear model. This allows for any functional form relationship between the budget shares and total expenditures, but assumes that the demographic variables enter the model in a linear way. We correct for potential endogeneity of total expenditures. Our results suggest that there are economies of scale in families' consumption expenditure patterns. We find some differences in consumption patterns which relate to differences in gender of children, which can be seen as evidence of sexual bias related to a commonly believed existing preference for boys.
        KW  - Engel curve
KW  - China
KW  - gender differences
KW  - bias
KW  - consumption
KW  - Household economics
        ER  -