Unintended childbearing and child cognitive outcomes: does gender matter?

Do unintended pregnancies have implications for children’s cognitive outcomes, and does this vary by gender? We address this question using rich longitudinal data from Indonesia − a country where nearly 3 million in every 8 million annual pregnancies are estimated to be unintended. Exploiting the random assignment of child gender, we identify a significant girl penalty specific to children born after an unintended pregnancy. Although girls in Indonesia generally outperform boys on cognitive tests, girls born after an unintended pregnancy show lower numerical and language abilities during adolescence compared to boys born under the same circumstances, a gap not observed among intended children. This penalty is robust to a wide range of household and child characteristics and to checks for selection on unobservables. Potential mechanisms point to lower parental investment in girls relative to boys within the unintended group, reflected in reduced private school enrollment and poorer early childhood health.