Title:The Effects of Having a Sibling: Evidence from China’s Family Planning Policy

Speaker:Yuting Bai

Abstract:This paper exploits local family planning policy changes in the 1980s in rural China as a natural experiment to study the long-term causal effects of having a sibling on educational attainment, labor market outcome, and adult living arrangements. First, we obtain cohort difference-in-differences (DID) estimates using the 2010-2016 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS). We find that if policy allows a sibling, it generally reduces the probability of obtaining a high school diploma. The negative effect on educational attainment is not significant for firstborn children, but highly significant for males with an elder sister. For living arrangements, firstborn females (with a sibling allowed by the policy) are more likely to live with parents than females without siblings, but there are no significant effects on firstborn males. Second, we use the exogenous cross-region variations in family planning regulation as an instrumental variable for sibship size to estimate the effect of sibship size on the average adult outcomes. IV estimates show that the siblings have a negative impact on one’s educational attainment, consistent with the DID estimates. Moreover, having an extra sibling decreases the probability of living with parents in adulthood. We find no significant impact of sibship size on income, however.

Yuting Baiis an assistant professor from Center for Economics, Finance, and Management Studies at Hunan University. She earned her PhD in Economics from State University of New York at Buffalo in 2021. Her research interest includes Urban Economics, Labor Economics, and Chinese economy.

Date:Thursday, April 21, 2022

Time:12:30-1:50pm.

Tencent meeting ID:494-487-436