The value of children: Inter-generational support, fertility, and human capital

Oliveira, Jaqueline

doi:10.1016/j.jdeveco.2015.12.002

Cited by 58 publications

(53 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Compared to western countries, where the social security system is more developed, China relies more heavily on families as the main providers of old-age support (Zimmer and Kwong 2003). In China, children's support for their parents mainly takes the form of co-residence (Logan and Bian 1999;Zhang 2004;Zimmer and Korinek 2010;Oliveira 2016), financial or in-kind support (Lee and Xiao 1998;Sun 2002;Cai, Giles, and Meng 2006;Lei et al 2012;Oliveira 2016), and time transfer (or informal care) (Lee and Xiao 1998;Lu, Liu, and Piggott 2015).…”

Section: Old-age Support In Chinamentioning

confidence: 99%

The Long-Term Consequences of Having Fewer Children in Old Age: Evidence from China's 'Later, Longer, Fewer' Campaign

Chen

Fang

2018

SSRN Journal

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Family planning plays a central role in contemporary population policies. However, little is known about its long-term consequences in old age because of the identification challenge. In this study, we examine how family planning affects the quality of life of the Chinese elderly. The direction of the effect is theoretically unclear. On the one hand, having fewer children allows parents to reallocate more resources to themselves, improving their well-being. On the other hand, having fewer children also leads to less care and companionship from children in old age. To empirically probe the effect of family planning, we identify the causal impact by exploiting the provincial heterogeneity in implementing the "Later, Longer, Fewer" policies in the early 1970s. We find that the policies greatly reduced the number of children born to each couple by 0.85. Parents also receive less support from children in terms of living arrangements, inter vivos transfers, and emotional support. Finally, we find that family planning has drastically different effects on elderly parent's physical and mental well-being. Whereas parents who are more exposed to the family planning policies consume more and enjoy slightly better physical health status, they report more severe depression symptoms. Our study calls for greater attention to the mental health status of the Chinese elderly.

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Section: Old-age Support In Chinamentioning

confidence: 99%

The Long-Term Consequences of Having Fewer Children in Old Age: Evidence from China's 'Later, Longer, Fewer' Campaign

Chen

Fang

2018

SSRN Journal

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“…The third implication is related to retirement and China's pension systems. Currently, Chinese parents with more children can receive more financial transfers from their children and are less likely to work past retirement age (Oliveira 2016). With fewer children in the future, aged parents would have to rely more on their pension instead of intergenerational support from their children.…”

Section: Conclusion and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is China’s Low Fertility Rate Caused by the Population Control Policy?

2020

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Whether China's low fertility rate is the consequence of the country's strict population control policy is a puzzling question. This paper attempts to disentangle the Chinese population control policy's impacts on the fertility rate from socioeconomic factors using the synthetic control method proposed by Abadie and Gardeazabal (2003). The results indicate that the population control policy significantly decreased China's birth rate after the "Later, Longer, and Fewer" policy came into force, but had little effect on the birth rate in the long run. We estimate that between 164.2 million and 268.3 million prevented births from 1971 to 2016 can be attributed to the Chinese population control policy. In addition, we implement a placebo study to check the validity of the method and confirm the robustness of the paper's conclusions. JEL CLASSIFICATIONS: C21; J13; Q566 The remainder of the paper is arranged as follows. In section 2, we introduce background information on the Chinese population control policy and its potential influences. In section 3, we describe the data used in this paper. In section 4, we present the econometric methods that are applied in this paper, namely the SCM and the placebo study. In section 5, we present the main empirical results. The last section presents the concluding remarks and related discussions.

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“…It implies that a high desired fertility may be what attract less educated males towards underage girls as brides. This result reflects the interplay between the usual quantity-quality trade-off (Becker and Lewis (1973);Oliveira (2016)) and the fact that compared to an older bride, a younger bride induces a lower marginal productivity of schooling for offspring (Marteleto and Dondero (2013)), and a lower cost of childbearing which tips the balance in favor of quantity, at the expense of quality.…”

Section: Optimal Child Quantity and Qualitymentioning

confidence: 92%

Underage Brides and Grooms' Education

2017

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Public intervention addressing the issue of underage marriage emphasizes policies such as girls' education and enforcement of age-of-consent laws as promising avenues for ending this harmful practice. It has been argued, however, that such policies will work better in societies where there are supported by men. Yet, there is no study analyzing the role of males' characteristics in relation to early marriage. This paper examines the causal effect of a male's education on the likelihood that he marries an underage girl. Using micro-level data from Nigeria in combination with plausible instrumental variables that address potential endogeneity issues, we find that having more years of schooling significantly reduces the probability of marrying an underage girl. Importantly, we show that this negative relationship is not a mere mechanical effect reflecting the endogeneity between schooling and marriage-timing decisions. Moreover, we find that this relationship is weaker in communities where norms that cast women in submissive roles are stronger. We develop a model that explains this causal effect as resulting from the complementarity between father's and mother's education in the production of child quality.JEL: J12, J13, O12.

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The value of children: Inter-generational support, fertility, and human capital

Cited by 58 publications

References 36 publications

The Long-Term Consequences of Having Fewer Children in Old Age: Evidence from China's 'Later, Longer, Fewer' Campaign

The Long-Term Consequences of Having Fewer Children in Old Age: Evidence from China's 'Later, Longer, Fewer' Campaign

Is China’s Low Fertility Rate Caused by the Population Control Policy?

Underage Brides and Grooms' Education

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