Three essays on structural approaches to intra-household resource allocations of human capital

Using 1993 Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS), the three essays examine intra-household human capital resource allocations in rural Indonesia. The first essay, "Educational Resource Allocation between Boys and Girls: A Structural Approach", formulates a structural model allowing for (1) different roles for boys and girls in household production and hence in the opportunity cost of their schooling, as well as (2) Pareto-efficient bargaining between their parents. For all cohorts in rural Indonesia, boys receive about 1.5 more years of schooling than girls. At the sample mean, (1) 36% of this difference is explained by differential values of the forgone production of boys and girls and (2) 64% is by parental differentiated preferences.;The second essay, "Taste vs. Technology: Allocating Medical Expenditures between Boys and Girls Given Gender-Specific Health Production Technologies", examines the differing recovery rates of boys and girls from negative health shocks and the dependence of the recovery rates on (1) production technologies that may differ between boys and girls and (2) preferences that may differ between mothers and fathers. It is found that (1) health production technologies for boys and girls differ in rural Indonesia. At the sample mean, outpatient care expenditures has an effect 5 times stronger on girls than on boys to reduce the total symptom-days. However, (2) given the same initial health shocks, rural Indonesian parents spend about one-third less of outpatient care on girls than on boys. (3) Mother's and father's individual equity in household assets, labor income, and education have differentiated effects on outpatient care expenditures on boys and girls, which may indicate parental differentiated individual preferences over boy's and girl's health, and bargaining process in household medical resource allocation.;The third essay, "Nutrition vs. Schooling: Health Production Technology, Market Returns to Health and Forgone Productivity as the Opportunity Cost of Schooling", explores the relationship between parental investments in boy's health and schooling. Empirical results indicate significant market returns to health, and that boys in better health (as indicated by higher levels of weight-for-height), therefore more forgone production and higher opportunity cost of schooling, are less likely to attend school. Household food expenditures, intra-household food allocations, and the unobserved heterogeneity of health endowment all significantly contribute to the variations in weight-for-height across the rural Indonesian boys. Within a household, those boys who receive more nutrients or who are better endowed in health spend less time at school.