| This paper estimates the effect of family planning policies on fertility in China. Both static and dynamic analyses are conducted. The static analysis estimates the policy effects on the number of births that a woman has ever had, using a cross-sectional sample of ever-married women with their birth records, from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS). The dynamic analysis explores the relationship between family planning policies and the likelihood of childbearing over time, using a panel sample of CHNS that records women's births in each year since age 15. The dynamic analysis applies a multiple-spell mixed-proportional hazard model where the unobserved individual heterogeneity is non-parametrically estimated, as suggested by Heckman and Singer (1984). Both static and dynamic analyses show that, family planning policies could explain about half of the fertility decline between cohorts 1943 and 1972 in the sample. Both analyses also improve policy measures adopted by previous studies, and make them reflect more complete policy history, and capture more heterogeneity of policy exposure. Particularly, the static analysis shows that, different policy measures could lead to substantially different results, which highlights the importance of measuring family planning policies appropriately. |
