This paper examines the impacts of China’s family planning policies in the 1970s (“Later, Longer, Fewer” campaign) on the long-term career advancement of men and women. Despite the high female labor participation rates, I use a cohort Triple-Difference approach and find a significant gender gap in achieving managerial positions among those affected by the policies, with average exposure reducing these disparities by 20%. The narrowing of the gender gap is more pronounced for women in non-white-collar or non-female-dominated industries, where fewer institutional advantages leave women more vulnerable to fertility-related career disruptions. Women more exposed to family planning policies tend to seek college education, increase labor input, and rely less on offspring for old-age support, with no analogous findings in males, suggesting that human capital accumulation is a key mechanism for the narrowing of the gender gap in career outcomes. This paper underscores the capacity of policy interventions to influence labor market dynamics and foster gender equality.

How do regime transitions shape the careers of later elites from places marked by loyalty to a defeated ruler? We study this question through the Jingnan Rebellion (1399-1402), when the Yongle emperor seized the Ming throne from the Jianwen emperor in a civil war. Using individual-level data linking examination records to career histories for elite examination graduates (jinshi) in Ming China, we show that the penalty arose less at entry than during subsequent career advancement: jinshi from counties associated with Jianwen loyalist martyrs were not systematically screened out at the examination stage, but they reached lower highest ranks, were more likely to remain in low-ranking offices, and were less likely ever to serve in the central government. This pattern is more consistent with county-level political stigma than with narrow lineage-based retaliation. The findings suggest that under contested succession, loyalty to a previous ruler could remain largely unpenalized at formal entry yet become a lasting liability in later official careers.

Public health restrictions generate substantial health benefits but may also impose social costs within households. I study China’s COVID-19 lockdown as a quasi-experimental shock to home confinement and examine its effects on household stability. Using a Difference-in-Differences design, I find that an average five-week lockdown increases divorce-related searches by about 18 percent, consistent with heightened marital distress on the intensive margin. Consistent patterns also emerge in conflict-related searches. Economic security buffers these responses: higher pre-pandemic savings and unemployment insurance coverage mitigate increases in marital distress. These patterns are mirrored in survey data, where marital satisfaction declines by 0.37 standard deviations, especially among young women with greater childcare responsibilities, while parent–child relationship measures change more modestly. The findings highlight an unintended household cost of large-scale mobility restrictions that is not directly measured in official records.

This paper examines how institutional restrictions on fertility create a large demand for illegal adoption and hence, incur more child abduction in China’s context. Using hand-collected data on abducted children during 1979-2000, both theoretical and empirical findings suggest that a more severe penalty for unauthorized birth locally leads to more children being trafficked to the region. However, the effect is significant only on male victims and is more pronounced in regions with more Confucian heritage. These findings underscore the significance of concerns stemming from strong preferences for family size and male offspring, which should not be underestimated in the implementation of fertility restriction. My study also calls for greater attention to the demand side when combating child abduction in developing countries.