Fertility
Paper Session
Monday, Jan. 4, 2021 3:45 PM - 5:45 PM (EST)
- Chair: Lucie Schmidt, Williams College
Spillovers in Childbearing Decisions and Fertility Transitions: Evidence from China
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 across localities 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.Sunrise, Sunset, and Fertility
Abstract
We exploit a series of time zone reforms that involved fifteen provinces across Russia from 2010 to 2016 to estimate the effect of sunrise and sunset times on fertility. We use monthly province-level births data from 2006 to 2018. The reforms moved borders between time zones. Some of the reforms shifted the sunrise and sunset times in the treated provinces down, while other reforms shifted them up. We consider, as explanatory variables, sunrise and sunset times and proportion of days with daylight at a particular hour of evening or morning. In addition, we utilize difference-in-differences estimator, synthetic control method, and a trigonometric model of seasonal fertility. Finally, we address volatility of births as a function of sunrise and sunset times. We find that darkness in the evening and, to a lesser extent, darkness in the morning are associated with an increase of at least one percent in fertility. We also find that not only the level but also seasonal volatility of births is sensitive to sunrise and sunset times.Kids Give You Headaches: Universal Prekindergarten, Maternal Health, and Fertility
Abstract
Prior research suggests that high quality prekindergarten (pre-K) programs can promote school readiness and generate lifetime benefits for children. However, very little is known about how pre-K programs affects mothers. In this study, we examine the effects of New York City’s pre-K program on the fertility and health of low-income mothers who participated in the Medicaid program. We use a difference-in-regression discontinuities design that exploits the introduction of universal pre-K and the cutoffs for participation of children in the program, in order to address potential preexisting confounding policies. We compare mothers of children born just inside the eligibility cutoff and mothers of those born just outside the eligibility cutoff, before and after the initiation of the universal pre-K program in New York City. We find that the effects of UPK differ between single and non-single mothers, and that the effects also differ between mothers whose 4-year-old is the youngest child in the household and those who have other, younger children at home. UPK weakly increases the live birth rate, primarily by reducing the likelihood of abortion among mothers whose eligible children were the youngest in the household. We also find significant negative effects on the likelihood of prescriptions for (single) mothers whose eligible children were the youngest in the household. Specifically, the introduction of UPK was associated with significant reductions in the use of non-addictive pain-relief drugs and oral contraceptives (primarily used for birth control and menstrual and related disorders) among these mothers.JEL Classifications
- J1 - Demographic Economics