Topic: The Origin of New Fertility Norm in China: Role of Laws Reform

Speaker: LIU Kaixin, Jinan University

Time: March 4, 2025, 14:30

Venue: EMS 229

Abstract:

This paper shows that the severe fertility control policies in China have a lasting suppressing impact on the fertility norms and actual fertility across generations. We overcome the difficulty of measuring social norms of fertility, through a carefully designed vignette experiment. We establish the causality of policy effects using a cohort-province difference-in-difference framework. We find that a one standard error increase in the maternal-age exposure to fertility restriction policies of respon-dents’ parents leads to a significant reduction in their normative views of fertility by 0.24 standard error. The policy’s effect should be viewed as a top-down destruction of Confucious fertility culture. We show that other important economic drivers for declining fertility like rising gender equality, housing price boom, and international trade openness, accelerate the norm reshuffle process. This indicating a co-evolving relation between fertility and fertility norm.

Guest Bio:

Kaixin Liu is an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Economic and Social Research of Jinan University in Guangzhou China. He graduated from Wuhan University, with bachelor degree with mathematical economics major. He obtained his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Rochester. Kaixin works in public economics, political economics, labor economics, and inequality. He is an applied economist with broad interest in economic theory. He serve his referee jobs for JOLE,CER,JPopE. He is affiliated with GLO. He received Young Economist Award by EEA in 2020.