Date & Time：May 27, 2020 14:00- 15:30
Venue：Virtual Seminar
Speaker：Yun Xiao（University of Amsterdam）
Abstract：
This paper uses Chinese family planning policies to quantify and explain spillovers in fertility decisions. We test whether ethnic minorities decreased their fertility in response to the policies, although only the majority ethnic group, the Han people, was subject to birth quotas. We exploit the policy roll-out and variation in pre-policy age-specific fertility levels to construct a measure of the negative shock to the Han fertility. Combining this measure with variation in the local share of Han, we estimate that a woman gives birth to 0.65 fewer children if the average completed fertility among her peers is exogenously reduced by one child. The fertility response of minorities is driven by cultural proximity with the Han and by higher educational investments, suggesting that spillovers operate through both social and economic channels. These results provide evidence that social multipliers can accelerate fertility transitions.
Speaker Biography：
Yun Xiao is a Ph.D. candidate in Economics in the Department of Economics, University of Amsterdam. She is interested in applied microeconomics, development economics, and family economics. Her research interests include peer effects in fertility decisions, human capital, education, and gender issues. One of her papers is published in the Journal of Comparative Economics, and another two papers are revised and resubmitted to the Journal of Human Resources and Journal of Population Economics.
