How Fertility Behavior Responds to Trade Shock: Evidence from China

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Xiaofan Li, University of International Business and Economics; Xiaojing Shi, University of International Business and Economics; Wanyu Yang, Dongbei University of Finance and Economics

Version: View help for Version V1

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
Data_T3_T5_T8.dta	application/x-stata-dta	21.8 MB	10/10/2021 11:11:PM

Project Citation:

Li, Xiaofan, Shi, Xiaojing, and Yang, Wanyu. How Fertility Behavior Responds to Trade Shock: Evidence from China. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2021-10-11. https://doi.org/10.3886/E152141V1

Project Description

Summary: This paper examines the fertility effect of a trade shock induced by China’s accession to the WTO by exploiting the variation in regional exposure to the shock. We find that trade uncertainty decline restrains fertility by both delaying childbearing and reducing lifetime fertility. Overall, the negative effect is larger in urban areas and for couples that already have children, especially sons. In addition, consistent with Becker’s model, the shock to females decreases fertility, but the shock to males has an opposite impact. Finally, with son preference, higher opportunity cost raises the probability of the first child being a boy.

Funding Sources: National Natural Science Foundation of China (72003021)

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: fertility; trade policy uncertainty; labor demand shock

Geographic Coverage: China

Time Period(s): 1991 – 2005

Collection Date(s): 7/2005 – 8/2005

Universe: whole population in China

Data Type(s): census/enumeration data

Collection Notes:

This data contains information on fertility behavior and trade uncertainty in China. We rely on China's 2005 population census to measure the fertility behavior of individuals. We link children to their parents and then trace the fertility history of each woman according to the ages of her children. In addition, we measure the decline in product-level trade uncertainty following Pierce and Schott (2016), which is defined as the gap between NTR tariff rates that are locked in by PNTR and non-NTR rates. We compute the NTR gap using ad valorem equivalent NTR and non-NTR tariff rates in 1999 (the year before the passage of PNTR in the US)

provided by Feenstra et al. (2002).

Methodology

Data Source: National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2005
Feenstra, R. C., Romalis, J., and Schott, P. K. (2002). Us imports, exports, and tariff data, 1989-2001.

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