The Research Of One-Child Policy's Effect On The Human Capital Accumulation Of China

This research examines the impact of the One-Child Policy(OCP)on Chinese human capital per capita.To the best of this author's knowledge,this research is the first to explore the effect of OCP on the growth of China's human capital and economy.Propensity Score Matching(PSM)was used,which improves the accuracy of the final result by avoiding the common selection bias in policy effect research.Following the literature,we use both educational attainment and health level as the proxy of the human capital.Consequently,our research confirms that the implementation of the OCP modestly improves the educational attainment of the next generation,which proves the credibility of the Quality-Quantity Trade-off Theory put forward by Becker to some extent.Furthermore,this research examined the relationship between the gender differences in educational attainment with the implementation of OCP.It was found that the OCP has a more substantial effect on the improvement of the female's education level than male's,which consequently reduces the gender difference in educational attainment.To ensure robust results,an ordered Probit model was established to exclude the disturbance caused by the implementation of the compulsory education policy.The final result of the ordered Probit regression is highly consistent with the main conclusion.In addition,the effect of the OCP on the improvement of the next generation's health was also checked,only to find that effect is significant to neither males nor females.To further understand the relation between this conclusion and the economic development,we extended our analysis to the marginal effect of the OCP on pretax income and post-tax income per capita.Our result argues that the OCP modestly improves the male's income without affecting that of the female.A Mediation Effect model,whereby the educational attainment of the next generation was chosen as the media factor,was established to explore the effect of OCP on individual-level income.This model reported that the implementation of OCP improved the income level of the next generation significantly by increasing the educational attainment and the mediation effect explained more than fifty per cent of the overall effect.Finally,we conclude by commenting on the two-child policy-which is temporarily promoted by the Chinese government-and providing some suggestions on policies.As far as we are concerned,the abolishment of the OCP,on the one hand,alleviates the shortage of effective supply in the labor market;on the other hand,increases the risk of decreasing the labor quality.Therefore,to adjust to the continually increasing schooling-aged children,it is suggested that the Chinese government embellish its relative education policy while promoting the two-child policy.For instance,households with more than one child,especially if the child is female,should be awarded enough financial incentive to support the children's schooling education,further to assure that the education of the next generation will not be negatively affected by the increasing population.