Children, old-age support and pension in rural China

Chuanchuan Zhang ()

China Agricultural Economic Review, 2015, vol. 7, issue 3, 405-420

Abstract: Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to examine the substitute between social old-age insurance and adult children in providing old-age support, and estimate the effects of China’s old rural pension program (ORPP) on sex ratio. Design/methodology/approach - – Using data from China’s 2005 inter-census population survey and China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, this paper estimates the effects of children on rural parents’ take-up of pension program and the effects of having access to pension on old parents’ choice of resource for future old-age support. The effects of China’s ORPP on sex ratio are estimated using difference-in-differences identification strategy. Findings - – Peasants having sons are less likely to participate in pension program and each additional son and daughter significantly decreases their likelihood of participation. Moreover, the effect of sons is much larger than that of daughters. Peasants having access to pension are less likely to rely on their children for old-age support. The implementation of the ORPP moderately decreased sex ratio. Social implications - – Implementing pension program in China’s rural area will probably affect rural people’s fertility behavior and thus be helpful in correcting sex ratio bias. Originality/value - – This paper first estimates the effects of having access to pension on old parents’ choices of providers of old-age support, and estimates the causal effect of rural pension on sex ratio using standard DID strategy.

Keywords: China; Children; Old-age support; Pension; Rural regions; Sex ratio (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:caerpp:v:7:y:2015:i:3:p:405-420

DOI: 10.1108/CAER-01-2014-0003

Access Statistics for this article

China Agricultural Economic Review is currently edited by Dr Fu Qin, Dr Jikun Huang, Dr Kevin Z Chen, Dr Weiming Tian, Prof Daniel Sumner, Prof Xian Xin and Prof Holly Wang

More articles in China Agricultural Economic Review from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().