Arbeitspapier

Gender and racial biases: Evidence from child adoption

This paper uses a new data set on domestic child adoption to document the preferences of potential adoptive parents over born and unborn babies relinquished for adoption by their birth mothers. We show that adoptive parents exhibit significant biases in favor of girls and against African-American babies. A non-African-American baby relinquished for adoption attracts the interest of potential adoptive parents with probability 11.5% if it is a girl and 7.9% if it is a boy. As for race, a non-African-American baby has a probability of attracting the interest of an adopting parent at least seven times as high as the corresponding probability for an African-American baby. In addition, we show that a child's desirability in the adoption process depends significantly on time to birth (increasing over the pregnancy, but decreasing after birth) and on adoption costs. We also document the attitudes toward babies' characteristics across different categories of adoptive parents - heterosexual and same-sex couples, as well as single women and foreign couples. Finally, we consider several recently discussed policies excluding same-sex and foreign couples from the adoption process. In our data, such policies would reduce the number of adopted babies by 6% and 33%, respectively.

Language
Englisch

Bibliographic citation
Series: CESifo Working Paper ; No. 2921

Classification
Wirtschaft
Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
Bargaining Theory; Matching Theory
Subject
child adoption
gender bias
racial bias
search
matching
Familienrecht
Geschlechterdiskriminierung
Ethnische Diskriminierung
Schwarze
USA

Event
Geistige Schöpfung
(who)
Baccara, Mariagiovanna
Collard-Wexler, Allan
Felli, Leonardo
Yariv, Leeat
Event
Veröffentlichung
(who)
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
(where)
Munich
(when)
2010

Handle
Last update
10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET

Data provider

This object is provided by:
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Object type

  • Arbeitspapier

Associated

  • Baccara, Mariagiovanna
  • Collard-Wexler, Allan
  • Felli, Leonardo
  • Yariv, Leeat
  • Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)

Time of origin

  • 2010

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