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.
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 how members of a family interact on a daily basis. In this paper, I explore the relationship between different kinship traditions and couples’ decision-making patterns. I focus on the contrast between matrilineal and patrilineal (descent emphasising the mother’s/father’s bloodline) and in particular two specific practices accompanying different descent systems: inheritance and post-marital residence. 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 (the tradition where a married couple resides with the wife’s family) is associated with increasing involvement in decision-making for both couple, due to fewer husbands and wives being excluded from the decision-making process of their household, and more couples making decisions jointly. On the other hand, no association is found between inheritance and decision-making, except that husbands are less likely to be the sole decision-maker. 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.
[PDF]
Work in Progress
Chasing Thirty Million Words: Parental Speech, Gender, and Early Child Development in Timor-Leste
(with Victoria Baranov, Lisa Cameron, Diana Contreras Suarez, Alejandrina Cristia, Adeline Delavande, Pauline Grosjean and Sarah Walker)
Abstract: Direct verbal interaction between caregiver and child, also known as Child-Directed Speech (CDS), is fundamental to early cognitive development, yet children in low-resource settings receive substantially less CDS than their peers in higher-resource contexts. We implement a randomized simple information intervention about CDS targeting either mothers or fathers in Timor-Leste, providing information on the benefits of CDS and practical implementation strategies through a video and calendar, and included a picture book to address families’ limited access to children’s books. We combine traditional testing methods with a novel automated speech analysis technology to evaluate effects on child language development. Results from one year after the intervention show that the intervention significantly improved child language development—equivalent to more than half a year of developmental progress. This effect is present among all mother treated households, and matrilineal father treated households. The primary mechanism appears to be behavioural change rather than belief updating among mothers.