Sibling networks may provide close-family support while also creating potential claims on household resources. Using 8893 urban households from the 2021 China Household Finance Survey, this paper relates the household head’s number of siblings to risky financial participation and the number of risky or investment asset categories held. A compact conceptual framework organizes the interpretation by treating household portfolio breadth as a buffer-preservation choice under income, liquidity, and family-obligation constraints. The preferred specifications condition on household, head, socioeconomic, province, and birth-cohort characteristics. Sibling count is negatively associated with both risky financial participation and risky or investment asset-category breadth. The association remains visible across alternative cohort controls, high-sibling treatments, and model-family checks. It is more pronounced among households with higher assets, higher income, and higher education, where participation and category breadth are more feasible financial margins. Sensitivity analysis assesses omitted variable selection under stated assumptions. Supplementary transfer indicators document financial connections within families. The estimates should be read as observational conditional associations rather than causal effects.
- Open Access
- Article
Sibling Networks and Risky Portfolio Breadth in Urban China
- Yu Liu *,
- Lianhuang Sun
Author Information
Received: 07 Jun 2026 | Revised: 14 Sep 2026 | Accepted: 08 Oct 2026 | Published: 19 Oct 2026
Abstract
Keywords
household finance | sibling networks | risky financial participation | portfolio breadth | China household finance survey | urban China
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