Abstract
This paper investigates the unexpected impact that enforcing birth control policies in China has upon the educational stratification between the Han majority, the policy target group, and ethnic minorities, a partially excluded group. Exploring county-level variation in the value of fines levied for unsanctioned births, we find that a stricter enforcement of the birth control policy leads to a larger educational gap between ethnic minorities and the Han majority in both rural and urban areas. More specifically, we find that higher fines lead to a larger improvement in the educational attainment of the Han majority and that this is principally due to the greater effect of these fines upon the reduction of family size and the subsequent concentration of family resources (among this population). Our findings indicate that the birth control policy has substantially contributed to the rising Han-minority educational gap in China.
Highlights
Ethnic minorities are often among society’s most disadvantaged groups and this makes them more vulnerable to poverty in developing countries
Exploring county-level variation in the value of fines levied for unsanctioned births, we find that a stricter enforcement of the birth control policy leads to a larger educational gap between ethnic minorities and the Han majority in both rural and urban areas
We show in a placebo test that the level of fine does not affect the educational attainment of older children who were born before the enactment of the one-child policy
Summary
Ethnic minorities are often among society’s most disadvantaged groups and this makes them more vulnerable to poverty in developing countries. Consistent with the prediction of the quantity and quality tradeoff model, we find higher fines simultaneously reduce family size and increase high school enrollment rates for the Han majority These results hold for both the rural and urban samples. Qian (2009) failed to find such evidence using the relaxation of the one-child policy While most of these papers have recognized the difference in birth control policies between the Han majority and ethnic minorities, and have often controlled for ethnicity in their regression analyses, none of them have acknowledged and evaluated the policy’s impact on educational disad vantages of ethnic minorities. This new policy allowed all couples to have two children How would this series of relaxations of the birth control policy affect the educational gap and relative welfare of the ethnic minorities versus the Han majority?
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