Child-Adoption Matching: Preferences for Gender and Race

Creators: Baccara, Mariagiovanna; Collard-Wexler, Allan; Felli, Leonardo; Yariv, Leeat

Abstract

This paper uses a new dataset on child-adoption matching to estimate the preferences of potential adoptive parents over US-born and unborn children relinquished for adoption. We identify significant preferences favoring girls and against African American children put up for adoption. These attitudes vary in magnitudes across different adoptive parents—heterosexual, same-sex couples, and single women. We consider the effects of excluding single women and same-sex couples from the process, and find that this would substantially reduce the overall number of adopted children. (JEL C78, J13, J15, J16)

Additional Information

This paper was previously circulated under the title: "Gender and Racial Biases: Evidence from Child Adoption." We thank two anonymous referees, Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Luca Anderlini, Oriana Bandiera, Heski Bar-Isaac, Cristian Bartolucci, Tim Besley, Chantal Collard, Federico Echenique, Lena Edlund, Ray Fisman, Carola Frege, Maia Güell, Luigi Guiso, Christopher Harris, Ali Hortaçsu, Soohyung Lee, Alessandro Lizzeri, Nicola Persico, Sevi Rodríguez Mora, Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, Yona Rubinstein, Bernard Salanié, and Yoram Weiss for helpful conversations and comments. We are especially grateful to Alistair Wilson for outstanding research assistance. Financial support from the National Science Foundation (SES 0963583) and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (through grant 1158) is gratefully acknowledged.

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Published - app.6.3.133.pdf

Supplemental Material - app/0603/2012-0239_app.pdf

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