Estimating treatment effects of the one-child policy: a self-report approach

Yingyao Hu () and Fangzhu Yang ()
Additional contact information
Yingyao Hu: Johns Hopkins University
Fangzhu Yang: Bates White Economic Consulting

Journal of Population Economics, 2025, vol. 38, issue 4, No 5, 23 pages

Abstract: Abstract We employ a self-reported survey measure of the ideal number of children to assess the impact of China’s one-child policy on couples’ childbearing. We take advantage of the novel feature of the self-reported measure that asks about couples’ preferences in a counterfactual setting to help identify the treatment effect of the one-child policy. The study estimates the policy’s treatment effect by using couples’ pre-policy ideal child numbers in 2014 and using the answer again in the post-policy period, under the assumption that the conditional distribution of the ideal number of children given the actual number of children is stationary without the policy constraint. Findings indicate a significant average reduction of 0.137 children per couple in 2014. Variations in policy effects are explored across educational, urban/rural, and occupational groups, with highly educated urban women in government jobs experiencing the most pronounced impact. Regional variations are also noted, mirroring policy stringency differences among provinces.

Keywords: Self-reported measures; One-child policy; Treatment effect; Heterogeneous treatment effect (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 J13 J18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00148-025-01130-2 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:jopoec:v:38:y:2025:i:4:d:10.1007_s00148-025-01130-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... tion/journal/148/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s00148-025-01130-2

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Population Economics is currently edited by K.F. Zimmermann

More articles in Journal of Population Economics from Springer, European Society for Population Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().