More Children Or More Education?

With the acceleration of the population ageing process and the continuous extension of the life expectancy of the elderly population,the quality of life of the elderly is receiving more and more attention.In China,there has always been the concept of "supporting children for old age" and "more children,more happiness".The traditional concept holds that the old-age security of parents is positively related to the number of children.However,some studies have proved that having more children is not necessarily a blessing,and the education level of children,not the number of children,has a positive effect on improving the quality of life of the rural elderly.In the context of an aging society with fewer children,research on the impact of the number and quality of children on the health of elderly parents will help to deepen understanding of family fertility and human capital investment,to further provide relevant literature support for the research and analysis of China’s population policy.Through combing the previous literature,this paper uses CHARLS data,after the basic data cleaning,to analyze the impact of the number and quality of children on the health of elderly parents.Among them,the health status is expressed by the comprehensive health score index constructed by the principal component analysis,the quality of children is measured by the maximum years of education of children,and the number of children is expressed by the total number of children reported.Using the exogenous impact of the one-child policy on the number of children,the exogenous impact of the Compulsory Education Law on the quality of children(the maximum number of years of schooling),and constructing the corresponding instrumental variables to solve the endogenous problems,and then we do an empirical analysis using least squares and two-stage least squares.A robust regression analysis was then performed using the number of children alive instead of the total number of reported children,health score instead of the Composite Health Score,and maximum likelihood and Generalized method of moments instead of 2 sls.Finally,in order to investigate the difference of regression results under different feature samples,sample regression is carried out.Findings:1.The quantity and quality of children are important factors influencing the health status of middle-aged and elderly parents.When controlling for variables at the individual,child and regional levels,the number of children had a significant negative effect on the overall health status of elderly parents,the quality of children(the maximum years of education)has a significant positive effect on the comprehensive health status of elderly parents.2.The number of children and the quality of children(maximum years of education)have substitution effect on the health status of elderly parents.A simple increase in the number of children would not improve the health status of elderly parents,while an increase in the quality of children,that is,the highest level of education of children,would significantly improve the health status of elderly parents.This conclusion,on the one hand,can provide an explanation for the phenomenon that people in the present society no longer have more children,but choose to pay more attention to the improvement of their children’s educational level,on the other hand,it can also provide policy basis for perfecting the social old-age security system.