31.05.2019Talk by Prof. Dr. Jorge Luis Garcia

I empirically characterize China’s One-Child Policy as a woman-level, age- specific pricing system allowing women to have more than one child.

I exploit within-woman variation to find that a 1% increase in the price of a permit to have a second or third child decreased the number of daughters per household by an average of 0.19%, but had a negligible effect on the number of sons. Despite this inelastic response, the policy impacted fertility through large permit prices. The total fertility rate and average daughter-to-son ratio were 1.5 and 0.8 in 2000. Without the policy, these values would have differed significantly and would have been 2.1 and 0.9.

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