The academic performance and mental wellbeing of world cup babies
Highlights
The 2002 FIFA World Cup led to an unexpected and temporary increase in South Korea’s fertility rate.
We use the quasi-experimental nature of the event to examine Becker’s trade-off between quantity and quality of children.
Our results support the notion of adverse effects on child quality measured by academic performance or school test scores.
We uncover that the same students exhibit significantly higher degrees of mental wellbeing.
