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Quality-Quantity Tradeoff of Children in Egypt |
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PP: 471-481 |
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doi:10.18576/jsap/110209
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Author(s) |
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Ehab Sakr,
Mona Khalifa,
Farouk Shoieb,
Sayed Khater,
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Abstract |
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| In Egypt, children are still seen as a source of income. We would, therefore, expect that quantity–quality tradeoff decisions are central in shaping fertility and education choices so that a negative causal effect of family size on child’s schooling exists. In this paper we argue that families display degrees of trading off quantity for quality and that this range of reactions is affected by socioeconomic, cultural and demographic covariates. The dataset used is that of the Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey (ELMPS) 2012. The sample includes 6,808 individuals in the age group (18-30). By applying cluster analysis, the sample was divided into six distinct homogenous clusters of families according to the outcome of their tradeoff choices and ranked. A tradeoff was adopted by (48.5%) of the families who choose a completed family size of 3 children or less and provided high or medium education. The remainder of the families (51.5%) had a larger number of children ranging between 5 and 9 and provided medium or low education. An ordinal logistic model was developed to explain the relationship between the order of the quality-quantity tradeoff choices and socio-economic background variables. The results indicate that a male child of low birth order, a child living in an urban area or belonging to the richest wealth index group or has an educated mother or a white collar father/mother has a relatively lower risk of belonging to a family that chooses quantity over quality than the reference child. Examples are given to illustrate how the results can be used to make predictive probabilities by changing the categories of the dependent variables. The most powerful impact was that of parity, wealth and mother’s education. By expanding and improving female education and employment it is expected that choosing to have a smaller family size and offering education to the children, will become more popular.
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