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Family Planning Policy in China: Measurement and Impact on Fertility

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  • Wang, Fei

Abstract

The extent to which China's family planning policy has driven its fertility transition over the past decades is debatable. The disagreement is partly sourced from the different ways of measuring the policy. Most existing measures, constructed on the policy history, generally, do not include complete secular and cross-sectional policy variations, fail to heterogeneously reflect people's exposure to the policy, and often suffer from endogeneity. This paper reviews the entire history of China's family planning policy and accordingly, proposes a new policy measure that integrates the policy variations more completely, heterogeneously, and exogenously by using the cross-sectional data of the China Health and Nutrition Survey. The new measure estimates the effect of policy on fertility and generates negative regression coefficients that well reproduce the history. As for the contribution of the policy to fertility transition, the measure explains a sizable level shift of fertility for major cohorts, but only accounts for a small portion of the fertility decline over generations. In addition, a more-educated woman, a woman residing in a better-developed coastal province, or a woman whose first child is a son tends to desire fewer children and thus, receives lighter pressure from the policy. Other than fertility, a woman would delay her marriage in response to the policy, particularly when it is strongly enforced. Finally, the paper shows that using an incomplete measure could systematically underestimate the effect of policy on fertility and adopting an endogenous measure or a measure lacking heterogeneity could even produce a positive effect of the policy.

Suggested Citation

  • Wang, Fei, 2012. "Family Planning Policy in China: Measurement and Impact on Fertility," MPRA Paper 42226, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:42226
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    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/42226/1/MPRA_paper_42226.pdf
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Cheng, Hua & Ma, Yuanyuan & Qi, Shusen & Xu, Lixin Colin, 2021. "Enforcing government policies: The role of state-owned enterprise in China’s one child policy," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    2. Wei Huang & Xiaoyan Lei & Yaohui Zhao, 2016. "One-Child Policy and the Rise of Man-Made Twins," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 98(3), pages 467-476, July.
    3. Xuan Jiang, 2020. "Family Planning And Women'S Educational Attainment: Evidence From The One‐Child Policy," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 38(3), pages 530-545, July.
    4. Pan, Zheng & Jiang, Xiandeng & Zhao, Ningru, 2021. "Does birth spacing affect female labor market participation? Evidence from urban China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    5. Bansak, Cynthia & Jiang, Xuan & Yang, Guanyi, 2020. "Sibling Spillover in Rural China: A Story of Sisters and Daughters," IZA Discussion Papers 13127, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Family Planning Policy; Fertility; China;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
    • O22 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Development Planning and Policy - - - Project Analysis
    • J18 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Public Policy

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