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 associated with loyalty to a defeated ruler? We study this question through the Jingnan Rebellion (1399--1402), when the Yongle emperor seized the Ming throne while preserving the examination-based recruitment system. Linking examination records to career histories for jinshi in Ming China, we show that the political penalty for association with Jianwen loyalist martyrs operated less at examination entry than during subsequent bureaucratic careers. Post-1402 jinshi from martyr counties did not suffer a systematic decline in top examination placement, but reached lower peak ranks, were more likely to remain in low-ranking offices, and were less likely to serve in the central government. The penalty extended beyond identifiable martyr lineages and instead attached to politically marked localities. We interpret this pattern as displaced political screening: meritocratic entry was preserved, while political trust was reallocated at later, less visible stages of career advancement. The findings show how regimes can consolidate power through personnel allocation within inherited institutions rather than visible institutional rupture. 

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 18.5 percent, consistent with heightened latent marital strain when formal adjustment is constrained. 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 0.35 standard deviations, especially among mothers with greater childcare burdens, while parent–child relationship measures change more modestly. The findings highlight an unintended household cost of large-scale mobility restrictions that is not directly captured by official records.

This paper examines whether fertility restrictions can increase destination-side demand for trafficked children by making out-of-plan births more costly. In the context of China’s one-child policy, households facing binding quantity constraints and severe penalties for unauthorized births may shift toward illegal adoption, which avoids pregnancy-related detection and can be easier to conceal administratively. Using a hand-collected dataset of self-reported child abduction victims from 1979 to 2000, I find that stricter local penalties for unauthorized births are associated with more children being trafficked into a prefecture. A one-standard-deviation increase in the penalty fine is associated with about 13 percent more abducted children being trafficked into a prefecture, with the effect concentrated among boys. The estimated relationship is also stronger in prefectures with deeper Confucian heritage, consistent with stronger preferences for larger family size and male offspring. These findings suggest that population-control policies can spill over into illicit child markets by raising the value of an additional child, implying that fertility-policy enforcement and child-protection policy should be considered jointly.