Parental unemployment and child health in China

Janneke Pieters and Samantha Rawlings

Review of Economics of the Household, 2020, vol. 18, issue 1, No 10, 207-237

Abstract: Abstract This paper studies the causal effect of maternal and paternal unemployment on child health in China, analyzing panel data for the period 1997–2004, when the country underwent economic reforms leading to massive layoffs. Using a FE-IV strategy, we find that paternal unemployment reduces child health, while maternal unemployment has beneficial child health impacts. Analysis of channels shows that paternal and maternal unemployment have different effects on income, time use, and children’s diets. Though many estimates are imprecise, a key finding is that paternal unemployment significantly reduces children’s fat intake and dietary diversity. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first evidence on the causal effect of parental unemployment on the nutrient intake of children aged 0–17. In all, our estimates are consistent with the notion that traditional gender roles can explain why mothers’ and fathers’ unemployment affect child health differently.

Keywords: Child Health; Unemployment; Nutrition; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 J13 J69 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11150-019-09457-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Parental Unemployment and Child Health in China (2016)
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:kap:reveho:v:18:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1007_s11150-019-09457-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/11150/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11150-019-09457-y

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Economics of the Household is currently edited by Shoshana Grossbard

More articles in Review of Economics of the Household from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().