Family- and child-related topics in China have drawn wide attention from the public and scholars. A number of studies have been interested in the impact of the recent change from the one-child policy to the two-child policy in 2016 in China. The new policy raised births by 1.31 million in China in 2016 shortly. Births then decreased by 0.63 million in 2017. The government originally estimated the new policy would increase 3 million newborns annually in the five or six years following the policy change; however, the estimate did not take into account the low willingness of having a first child. The increase in 2016 fell far short of the government's target and could not compensate the decrease in the willingness of having a first child. According to fertility intention and behavior surveys conducted in China, the low willingness of having a child or having an additional child was attributed to the soaring costs of raising children. Cost estimates of raising children can provide an important insight into how children affect family economic decisions. In China, couples with two children are over-represented by a lowly-educated, rural, and sonspreferred population. This is commonly attributed to an exemption in the one-child policy: only particular couples could have a second child, and these couples were disadvantaged, lived in rural areas, and had a strong preference for sons. Using data from the Survey and Research Center for China Household Finance at Southwestern University of Finance and Economics conducted in 2011, I employ a selection bias correction and equivalence scale method to estimate the costs of raising children that consider economies of scale enjoyed by a couple living with children. I find no difference between the costs of raising a son and a daughter for a representative one-child family. The marginal cost of raising an additional child was higher for a representative couple with a firstborn daughter and a second-born son than a couple with children of the same gender. To raise an additional child, on average, the cost was higher for an urban family than a rural one, and the cost was higher for a couple with more years of schooling than one with fewer years of education. Besides the family planning policy, another subject-matter of concern is China's unequal access to educational resources among children from different backgrounds - rich and poor, urban and rural. Many countries have introduced conditional cash transfer programs, which provide incentives to relatively disadvantaged individuals or households when specific requirements are met. I evaluate the impact of a social experiment, the Youth Education Improvement Program, designed to improve youth's academic achievement in a neediest area through conditional cash transfers. The estimates show that the incentive had positive impacts on student performance in both standardized Chinese and mathematics examinations when using a sample with balanced characteristics. I also estimate the impacts by baseline performance and find the most significant effects of the monetary incentives for students with a relatively low baseline score while finding no significant impacts for students with a relatively high baseline score. Results using a sample with unbalanced characteristics yield no significant impacts across different baseline scores.
Family- and child-related topics in China have drawn wide attention from the public and scholars. A number of studies have been interested in the impact of the recent change from the one-child policy to the two-child policy in 2016 in China. The new policy raised births by 1.31 million in China in 2016 shortly. Births then decreased by 0.63 million in 2017. The government originally estimated the new policy would increase 3 million newborns annually in the five or six years following the policy change; however, the estimate did not take into account the low willingness of having a first child. The increase in 2016 fell far short of the government's target and could not compensate the decrease in the willingness of having a first child. According to fertility intention and behavior surveys conducted in China, the low willingness of having a child or having an additional child was attributed to the soaring costs of raising children. Cost estimates of raising children can provide an important insight into how children affect family economic decisions. In China, couples with two children are over-represented by a lowly-educated, rural, and sonspreferred population. This is commonly attributed to an exemption in the one-child policy: only particular couples could have a second child, and these couples were disadvantaged, lived in rural areas, and had a strong preference for sons. Using data from the Survey and Research Center for China Household Finance at Southwestern University of Finance and Economics conducted in 2011, I employ a selection bias correction and equivalence scale method to estimate the costs of raising children that consider economies of scale enjoyed by a couple living with children. I find no difference between the costs of raising a son and a daughter for a representative one-child family. The marginal cost of raising an additional child was higher for a representative couple with a firstborn daughter and a second-born son than a couple with children of the same gender. To raise an additional child, on average, the cost was higher for an urban family than a rural one, and the cost was higher for a couple with more years of schooling than one with fewer years of education. Besides the family planning policy, another subject-matter of concern is China's unequal access to educational resources among children from different backgrounds - rich and poor, urban and rural. Many countries have introduced conditional cash transfer programs, which provide incentives to relatively disadvantaged individuals or households when specific requirements are met. I evaluate the impact of a social experiment, the Youth Education Improvement Program, designed to improve youth's academic achievement in a neediest area through conditional cash transfers. The estimates show that the incentive had positive impacts on student performance in both standardized Chinese and mathematics examinations when using a sample with balanced characteristics. I also estimate the impacts by baseline performance and find the most significant effects of the monetary incentives for students with a relatively low baseline score while finding no significant impacts for students with a relatively high baseline score. Results using a sample with unbalanced characteristics yield no significant impacts across different baseline scores.
