Research
Job Market paper:
Born with Burden? The Effect of Family-Planning Above-quota Sanctions on Children’s Education in Rural China (Solo-authored dissertation)
Abstract: This study evaluates the impact of the coercive family-planning policy, introduced in China in the late 1970s, on the educational outcomes of rural children through sanctions imposed on above-quota births. The findings indicate a pronounced negative impact on the educational outcomes of children from quota-exceeding households due to these sanctions. The adverse effect was concentrated in low-educated and low-income households, implying that the sanctions may unintentionally widen income inequality and reduce inter-generational mobility. Our findings provide novel empirical evidence for the impacts of China’s coercive family planning policies: the policies risked impeding human capital accumulation through the above-quota sanctions imposed on quota-exceeding households, probably offsetting some of the potential benefits yielded through reduced fertility rates; the policies also induced a distributional effect that skewed resources from quota-exceeding households to those adhering to the quota.
(Draft)
Working Papers
Interaction Between Parental Preferences and Coercive Family Planning Policies With Endogenous Fertility (Solo-authored dissertation)
Abstract: This study uses a model to elucidate how the interplay between parental preferences and coercive family planning policies affects fertility behavior. The findings suggest that if parents follow an optimal stopping rule—ceasing to have more children once they have sufficiently satisfying existing children—the coercive family planning policy would act as a filtering mechanism, under which only families extremely dissatisfied with their current offspring would choose to have more children than the birth quota allows. Coupled with the widespread son preference in China, the implication of this model is that families with a strong preference for sons, yet fewer than the desired number of male children, are more likely to have offspring exceeding the birth quota. Consequently, girls from quota-exceeding families are likely to shoulder a larger portion of the adverse impacts stemming from above-quota sanctions, which contributes to exacerbating the overall gender inequality in society. The empirical analysis supports the predicted patterns of fertility behavior from the model.
(Draft available upon request)
Education Competition and Low Fertility (Solo-authored dissertation)
Abstract: Prior studies have indicated that the substantial costs associated with childcare and education in East Asia play a significant role in perpetuating the region's consistently low fertility rates. This paper develops a model of parental fertility decisions and educational investments within a large contest and seeks to answer two primary questions: firstly, how a competitive environment in education contributes to a low fertility equilibrium; and secondly, the factors that give rise to such intense competition in the educational sector. The analysis demonstrates that as income disparity worsens, the equilibrium fertility rate declines. However, the equilibrium fertility rate increases with greater importance of public investment in education contest as opposed to that of private education investment. Furthermore, such enhanced importance of public investment in education has the potential to counteract the negative impact of income disparity on parental fertility decisions. These findings offer substantial policy insights that can be executed with low institutional costs.
(Draft available upon request)