Jianing Ying

JOB MARKET PAPER

Impacts of the Transition from "One-Child" Policy to "Two-Children" Policy on Households in China

Abstract: Since early 21st century, China has gradually transitioned from the "one-child" policy to the "two-children" policy in multiple stages. This paper studies the impacts of the expected number of children on household expenditures and savings pattern, and on household members, particularly the first-born child and the wife/mother in the family. While many economists have previously examined the causal relationship between family size and various household outcomes, all prior research focus solely on the actual number of children. Using the variation in households' eligibility of having a second child due to changes in the family planning policy, this study finds evidence that changes in household behavior and female labor supply may take effect even before changes in family size actually occur. The results show that an increase in the expected number of children due to policy changes can increase annual household savings by approximately 25,000 yuan and decrease the probability that the wife/mother is employed by 15 percentage points.

WORKING PAPERS

Effects of Rural-Urban Migration: Evidence from China

This paper mainly investigates the effects of parents' rural-urban migration on children. The endogenous issue lies in the heterogeneity of parents in deciding whether to migrate and whether to take children with them. Inspired by Cynthia Kannan, Shing-Yi Wang and Yongxiang Wang's paper "Access to Migration for Rural Households" published in AEJ in 2018, in which they found higher rates of migration from recipient provinces of the "sent-down youth (SDY)” program to SDY sending provinces decades after the SDY program ended, this paper also exploits the SDY program of China in 1962-1978 to overcome this empirical challenge. Therefore, this paper uses interaction of historical level of SDY flows and "hukou" reforms occurred in SDY sending provinces, and interaction of historical level of SDY flows and labor demand shocks in SDY sending provinces, to instrument for probability to migration.

Effects of Immigration with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in the U.S.

This paper uses a shift-share type of instrument to examine the effects of immigration with TPS on local labor markets and on immigrants themselves, hoping to use the results to predict the likely outcomes if Trump really ends TPS designation.