Gender of Children and Parents’ Happiness in New Economic Period
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| Title | Gender of Children and Parents’ Happiness in New Economic Period
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| Author | Lu Fangwen and Liu Gordon |
| Organization | School of Economics, Renmin University of China；Peking University |
| Email | lufangwen@ruc.edu.cn; gordonliu@nsd.pku.edu.cn |
| Key Words | Happiness; Gender of Children; Son preference. |
| Abstract | After the reform and open-up for more than 30 years, the social and economic conditions have experience great change in China. The long-term high sex ratio and the traditional son preference make some people think for sure that son helps to improve the happiness of parents. However, our study shows that in the new economic period, the answer is not as expected. Making use of the exogeneity of the gender of the first-born child, this study finds that the gender of kids or teenagers has no effect on their parents’ happiness. But when they are up to marriage, sons significantly reduce parents’ happiness, which is exacerbated by housing price. The traditionally expected function of raising son for the elderly is missing in the new era; the chance of parents living together with a son is not higher than they do with a daughter, and son also reduces the happiness of elder parents. |
| Serial Number | WP929 |
| Time | 2015-09-30 |
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