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Intergenerational transmission of fertility: evidence from China's population control policies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 October 2024

Yongkun Yin Open the ORCID record for Yongkun Yin [Opens in a new window]
Yongkun Yin*
Affiliation:
School of Economics, Shandong University, Jinan, China
*
Email: yongkunyin@gmail.com
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Abstract

This paper examines how the number of siblings that parents have affects their fertility decisions in China. The population control policies in China affected individuals unequally across birth cohorts and regions. The exogenous variation in fertility is used to identify the effect of the number of siblings on the number of children for the next generation. The results show that a couple tends to have 0.034–0.068 more children (2.3–4.6% of the average number of children) and is 2.4–6.8 percentage points more likely to violate the One-Child Policy (9.3–27.1% of the violation rate) if the husband and the wife have one more sibling each. Moreover, the effect on fertility is stronger for couples in lower-income provinces where the fertility rate is higher and in rural areas where the One-Child Policy was enforced less strictly. Finally, I show that the ideal family size of the husband and wife is an important channel through which the number of siblings affects fertility. I also find that the effect of people's number of siblings has a larger effect on their ideal number of children than on their actual number of children, suggesting that they are constrained from achieving their fertility ideals.

Keywords

Chinafertilityintergenerational transmissionpreference formationpopulation policies

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Type
Research Paper
Information
Journal of Demographic Economics , Volume 91 , Issue 3 , September 2025 , pp. 407 - 438
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press in association with Université catholique de Louvain

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