efficient of _Firstborn girl_ in Table A.10 is negative and often significant suggesting that FG families consume significantly less per capita than FB families even when dowry is not a consideration. This could be because FG families have more children than FB families and thus have more household members. But the interaction term is never significant, implying that there is no differential impact of expected dowry on per capita food, non-food, as well as total consumption expenditure.

**Labor supply.** The birth of a first child can affect parents’ time allocation in the following ways. As the permanent dowry-related income shock due to firstborn sex is a pure lottery and does not change the reward or wage from working, there is no substitution effect. The income effect of future dowry implies that, in the absence of credit constraints, FB parents should increase leisure (decrease labor supply) and FG parents should increase labor supply. However, if the household is credit constrained, current labor supply may not decrease for FB parents despite higher permanent income. If FG parents are income-constrained, they may also increase labor supply in an attempt to supplement their income to finance the higher savings needed for the future dowry expense. We focus on father’s labor supply in this paper as 89 percent of the mothers in our data set report being a housewife as their primary occupation.<sup>37</sup>

REDS provides information on the number of days worked each year between 1986 and the year of survey for each household member. We construct a panel data set of fathers’ labor supply from this information and estimate the effect on father _i_ from caste _c_ in state _s_ in year _t_<sup>_′_</sup> and whose first child was born in year _t_ using the following specification: where _Lit′_ denotes the number of days worked in year _t_<sup>_′_</sup> ; _Postt′>t_ equals 1 if _t_<sup>_′_</sup> _> t_ , and 0 otherwise; and _FirstGirli_ and _Dowrycst_ are defined as before. We include time interaction fixed effects (i.e., _δst′, θct′, πtt′_ ) as well as time fixed effects ( _ωt′_ ) in this specification. The coefficient _β_ 2 captures how expected dowry affects father’s number of days worked after the birth of a firstborn boy and _β_ 1 captures the differential response of parents of a firstborn girl after her birth. The panel nature of the labor supply variable allows us to also control for father fixed effects ( _γi_ ).

Column (1) in Table 8 shows that greater future dowry expenditure causes FG fathers to work more relative to FB fathers after the birth of their first child; the latter do not exhibit a significant change in their annual labor supply. Note that, in the absence of dowry expectations, FG fathers do not work more than FB fathers after their first child is born. For mean expected dowry (=INR 26,120), the triple-interaction coefficient (=3.64) translates into roughly 10 more days worked each year for an FG father relative to his labor supply before the daughter’s birth and relative to an FB

> 37The predictions for mother’s labor supply are not straightforward. While child rearing may involve some decline in market work irrespective of child gender, returns to investment of women’s time in child-care on the child’s marriage market may be an additional consideration while allocating time.

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