The One-Child Policy and Household Saving

Taha Choukhmane, Nicolas Coeurdacier and Keyu Jin

Journal of the European Economic Association, 2023, vol. 21, issue 3, 987-1032

Abstract: We investigate whether the “one-child policy” has contributed to the rise in China’s household saving rate and human capital in recent decades. In a life-cycle model with intergenerational transfers and human capital accumulation, fertility restrictions lower expected old-age support coming from children—inducing parents to raise saving and education investment in their offspring. Quantitatively, the policy can account for at least 30% of the rise in aggregate saving. Using the birth of twins under the policy as an empirical out-of-sample check to the theory, we find that quantitative estimates on saving and education decisions line up well with micro-data.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jeea/jvad001 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: The one-child policy and household saving (2023)
Working Paper: The One-Child Policy and Household Saving (2023)
Working Paper: The One-Child Policy and Household Saving (2023)
Working Paper: The One-Child Policy and Household Savings (2014)
Working Paper: The One-Child Policy and Household Savings (2014)
Working Paper: The One-Child Policy and Household Savings (2013)
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:oup:jeurec:v:21:y:2023:i:3:p:987-1032.

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of the European Economic Association is currently edited by Romain Wacziarg

More articles in Journal of the European Economic Association from European Economic Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().