Spillovers in Childbearing Decisions and Fertility Transitions: Evidence from China

Pauline Rossi and Yun Xiao

Journal of the European Economic Association, 2024, vol. 22, issue 1, 161-199

Abstract: This article uses China’s family planning policies to quantify and explain spillovers in fertility decisions. We test whether ethnic minorities decreased their fertility in response to the policies, although only the majority ethnic group, the Han Chinese, were subject to birth quotas. We exploit the policy rollout and variation in pre-policy age-specific fertility levels to construct a measure of the negative shock to Han fertility. Combining this measure with variation in the local share of Han, we estimate that a woman gives birth to 0.63 fewer children if the average completed fertility among her peers is exogenously reduced by one child. The fertility response of minorities is driven by cultural proximity with the Han and by higher educational investments, suggesting that spillovers operate through both social and economic channels. These results provide evidence that social multipliers can accelerate fertility transitions.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jeea/jvad025 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Spillovers in Childbearing Decisions and Fertility Transitions: Evidence from China (2023)
Working Paper: Spillovers in Childbearing Decisions and Fertility Transitions: Evidence from China (2023)
Working Paper: Spillovers in Childbearing Decisions and Fertility Transitions: Evidence from China (2023)
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:22:y:2024:i:1:p:161-199.

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 ().