Working Paper
Fertility Policy Relaxation and Intra-Household Bargaining: Evidence from China’s One-Child Policy Generation
Abstract: What shapes the bargaining positions of the husband and wife within a family? This paper explores the effect of changes in fertility restriction policies on the intra-household bargaining of adults born under such a policy using the Chinese context. Starting from the mid-1980s, China carried out a partial relaxation to their compulsory One-Child Policy, allowing rural households to have two children if their first child happened to be female. Utilising the novel identification of cross-province differences in the timing of relaxation adoption, I found that the relaxation improved women’s intra-household bargaining position. This is evidenced by an increase in leisure and a smaller burden of both housework and labour among rural-born women and a lower marriage rate among rural-born men. Further evidence shows that the relaxation impacted marriage market conditions via a divergence of perceived gender norms across men and women, but did not actually worsen the male-biased sex ratio distortion in China.
Work in Progress
Disentangling Kinship: Post-marital residence and Household Decision-Making in Timor-Leste
Abstract: Kinship traditions play an important role in intra-household interactions by influencing with whom and how members in a family interact on a daily basis. While the existing literature provides ample evidence where matrilineal kinship (descent system organised along the mother’s bloodline) is associated with higher female status in various aspects both inside and outside the family, the mechanism behind such an occurrence yet to be thoroughly explored. In this paper, I focus on one specific aspects of kinship traditions: Post-marital residence rules, i.e., if a couple moves to live with the husband’s (patrilocality) or the wife’s (matrilocality) family after marriage. I first show using a global sample from the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) that historical post-marital residence practices are significantly correlated with modern-day involvement in decision-making of both spouses after controlling for other cultural characteristics. Then with primary survey data collected from Timor-Leste offering information on modern-day kinship practices, I provide evidence that matrilocality is associated with 0.22 and 0.35 standard deviations higher involvement in decision-making for wives and husbands respectively. Said results are mainly driven by households living with the wife’s family in matrilocal communities, indicating that the wife’s parents play a pivotal role in shaping the dynamics between a couple.
[Draft available upon request]