abstract: This dissertation comprises three chapters. In chapter one, using a rich dataset for the United States, I estimate a series of models to document the birth order effects on cognitive outcomes, non-cognitive outcomes, and parental investments. I estimate a model that allows for heterogeneous birth order effects by unobservables to examine how birth order effects varies across households. I find that first-born children score 0.2 of a standard deviation higher on cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes than their later-born siblings. They also receive 10\% more in parental time, which accounts for more than half of the differences in outcomes. I document that birth order effects vary between 0.1 and 0.4 of a standard deviation across households with the effects being smaller in households with certain characteristics such as a high income. In chapter two, I build a model of intra-household resource allocation that endogenously generates the decreasing birth order effects in household income with the aim of using the model for counterfactual policy experiments. The model has a life-cycle framework in which a household with two children confronts a sequence of time constraints and a lifetime monetary constraint, and divides the available time and monetary resources between consumption and investment. The counterfactual experiment shows that an annual income transfer of 10,000 USD to low-income households decreases the birth order effects on cognitive and non-cognitive skills by one-sixth, which is five times bigger than the effect in high-income household. In chapter three, with Francesco Agostinelli and Matthew Wiswall, we examine the relative importance of investments at home and at school during an important transition for many children, entering formal schooling at kindergarten. Moreover, our framework allows for complementarities between children's skills and investments from schools. We find that investments from schools are an important determinant of children's skills at the end of kindergarten, whereas parental investments, although strongly correlated with end-of-kindergarten outcomes, have smaller effects. In addition, we document a negative complementarity between children's skills at kindergarten entry and investments from schools, implying that low-skill children benefit the most from an increase in the quality of schools. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Economics 2018

Les migrations internationales modifient les rôles attribués à chacun.e dans une famille et nécessitent des réaménagements en conséquence de l’absence d'un.e ou plusieurs membres. Cette recherche examine les implications d'une pratique familiale qui consiste à faire grandir au Sénégal des enfants nés dans les pays de destination. La reproduction des statuts sociaux au croisement de deux espaces nationaux se négocient – entre autres – par le choix du lieu où grandissent les enfants et des personnes en charge de les élever. Le focus est mis sur les stratégies des mères car ce sont elles qui ont la charge du soin quotidien des enfants en migration, et parce que les enfants sont, pour la plupart, accueillis par des membres de leur parenté utérine à Dakar. Les parents migrants de cette enquête, issus de différentes fractions des classes moyennes dakaroises, évaluent les quartiers ségrégués, populaires et immigrés où ils résident dans les pays de migration comme risqués pour la socialisation de leurs enfants. L’incertitude qui pèse sur le devenir des enfants nés en migration (carrières déviantes, échec scolaire) met en danger la reproduction sociale des maisonnées transnationales et les projets de mobilité sociale des parents. Ainsi ces derniers luttent-ils pour transmettre à leurs enfants à la fois les ressources de l’autochtonie (normes, relations, écoles privées, environnement protégé) et les ressources internationales (travail, études supérieures, langues, droit de circulation) au travers de stratégies de socialisation et de relocalisation de leurs enfants à Dakar. Appuyée sur une enquête ethnographique multi-sites (douze mois de terrain, neuf mois au Sénégal, trois mois dans les pays de migration), cette recherche analyse comment ces pratiques transnationales reflètent des modes de lutte contre le déclassement social, ethno-racial et statutaire subi en migration, selon des (dis)-positions sociales et des ressources de départ différentes. Entre projets de retour (au Sénégal), investissements scolaires privés, logiques économiques et normes sociales, ce mode de prise en charge des enfants est intimement lié et contraint par le cadre politique et le contexte économique du pays de naissance des enfants (États-Unis, France, Italie). La décision de laisser partir un enfant au Sénégal est ainsi attachée à des politiques migratoires, familiales et scolaires. Cet arrangement apparemment singulier est toutefois exemplaire d »une façon d’émigrer perçue comme provisoire ou du moins sans rupture, ainsi que de liens affectifs et économiques qui dépassent largement ceux d’un modèle conjugal et nucléaire de la famille. / International migration results in the reconfiguration of the roles taken up by each family member, requiring readjustments in the absence of one or more relatives. This study examines the implications of the kinship practice of sending children who were born abroad to grow up in Senegal, their parent’s country of origin. The reproduction of social status at the intersection of two national spaces is negotiated, in part, by the choice of where children will live and who will take charge of bringing them up. Here, I focus on mother’s strategies, given that they are most often in charge of the daily care of children in the context of migration, and because in most cases, the children studied were welcomed by members of their maternal kin in Dakar.The migrant parents in this study, who come from various segments of Dakar’s middle class, esteem that the segregated, lower-class, and immigrant neighborhoods where they live abroad represent a risk for their children’s socialization. This uncertainty, which weighs heavily on the futures of children born in migration (the risk of deviance and scholarly failure) endangers the social reproduction of transnational households and their parents’ ambitions of social mobility. As such, these caregivers strive to transmit to their children, both the resources of their country of origin (social norms and relations, private schools, a protected environment) and international resources (work, higher education, language skills, rights to travel) through socialization strategies and by moving their children to Dakar. Drawing on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork (twelve months total, nine in Senegal and three in countries of migration), this study analyzes how these transnational practices reflect various means through which families fight against the treat of downward social mobility, relative to their ethnicity/race and assigned status in migration and associated with their social positions and resources pre-migration. Between ambitions to return to Senegal, investments in private schooling, economic logics, and social norms, the means of caring for one’s children is intimately linked and constrained by the political economic context in the children’s country of birth (United States, France, or Italy). The decision to send one’s child to grow up in Senegal is thus bound up with the politics of migration, in families, and of schools. This arrangement, apparently exceptional, is nonetheless exemplary of a form of emigration perceived to be temporary or at least without rupture, and affective and economic connections which far exceed the nuclear family.