Quantity-Quality and the One Child Policy:The Only-Child Disadvantage in School Enrollment in Rural China

45 Pages Posted: 26 May 2009 Last revised: 1 Dec 2022

See all articles by Nancy Qian

Nancy Qian

Yale University - Department of Economics

Date Written: May 2009

Abstract

Many believe that increasing the quantity of children will lead to a decrease in their quality. This paper exploits plausibly exogenous changes in family size caused by relaxations in China's One Child Policy to estimate the causal effect of family size on school enrollment of the first child. The results show that for one-child families, an additional child significantly increased school enrollment of first-born children by approximately 16 percentage-points. The effect is larger for households where the children are of the same sex.

Suggested Citation

Qian, Nancy, Quantity-Quality and the One Child Policy:The Only-Child Disadvantage in School Enrollment in Rural China (May 2009). NBER Working Paper No. w14973, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1408893

Nancy Qian (Contact Author)

Yale University - Department of Economics ( email )

28 Hillhouse Ave
New Haven, CT 06520-8268
United States

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