 Does birth spacing affect female labor market participation? Evidence from urban ChinaZheng Pan, Xiandeng Jiang and Ningru Zhao China Economic Review, 2021, vol. 68, issue C Abstract: This paper investigates the impact of birth spacing on female labor market participation in urban China. Employing household panel surveys between 1989 and 2011 and exploiting variations in time intervals between the first and second child, we find that spacing births at longer intervals significantly increases female labor market participation. The effects of birth spacing are robust to various examinations that consider nonlinear specifications, selection on observed and unobserved variables, and the plausibly exogenous instrument. The heterogeneous analysis suggests that the effects of birth spacing are more pronounced in women with a daughter as the first birth, women with late first birth, and less-educated women. We examine potential mechanisms and document that women with longer birth intervals are likely to invest more in continuing education and have better health status. Keywords: Birth spacing; Labor market participation; One-child policy; Urban area (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:chieco:v:68:y:2021:i:c:s1043951x21000626 DOI: 10.1016/j.chieco.2021.101644 Access Statistics for this article China Economic Review is currently edited by B.M. Fleisher, K. X. D. Huang, M.E. Lovely, Y. Wen, X. Zhang and X. Zhu More articles in China Economic Review from Elsevier |
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