The Effect Of The Number Of Children On The Mental Support Of Elderly Parents

As a country with a large population,China’s policy on population control is significantly stronger than that of any other country at any stage in history,which creates conditions for the evaluation method of regression discontinuity.Considering that the one-child policy was fully implemented in September 1980 and there was a certain lag in the birth time,we speculate that there should be a "cutoff point" of fertility in 1981.Based on the data from the baseline survey of China Family Panel Studies(CFPS),this paper selects the samples of the first child born before and after the implementation of the one-child family planning policy,and uses fuzzy regression discontinuity to identify the causal relationship between the mental status of the el-derly and the number of children in China by combining urban and rural differences.In the process of processing the original data,this paper successively excludes the family samples of non-Chinese nationality or the sample of families with children of non-Chinese nationality,individuals who were not married and had no children,samples from backward and remote provinces where family planning was not gener-ally implemented at that time,without universal implementation of family planning,and samples from ethnic minorities.The data used are based on the baseline survey data of 2018,with a total of 13641 sample data comprising 9,885 people with a-gricultural household registration and 3,756 people with non-agricultural household registration.In the first stage of regression,the effect of the one-child policy on the probabil-ity of having more children is examined.In the second stage of regression,the effect of the number of children on the happiness and depression of elderly parents in ur-ban and rural areas is analyzed.Smoothness test,continuity hypothesis of control variables and placebo test excluding other policy implications were conducted to test the effectiveness of the above regression discontinuity estimates.After passing the above robustness test,the urban-rural heterogeneity was analyzed.It is found that the mental support situation of the elderly parents in rural families with only child is the worst,and then the mental status of the parents in rural families with single-sex children is further investigated.Finally,it analyzes the income and health factors that may affect the mental state of the elderly parents with only child.This paper has the following conclusions:1.Parents of single-child families are faced with greater pension risks than parents of multi-child families.Parents of single-child families in middle and old age have lower subjective well-being of life and worse mental condition.2.Under the effect of the one-child policy,the reduction of the number of children has a significant negative impact on the happiness level of elderly parents,and parents in families with only children are more depressed than those in families with many children.3.In the analysis of urban-rural heterogeneity,compared with urban families,the one-child policy has a more significant impact on the elderly parents in rural families.In the rural sample,the happiness of the elderly parents in the family with only child is significantly reduced,and the state of mental support of families with only girls is worse than that of families with only boys.The happiness of elderly parents in rural areas is more dependent on the number of children and they face more serious pension problems.4.By analyzing the income factors and the health factors that affect the mental state of elderly parents,it is found that the life quality and mental state of the parents of only children who enter the old age are still dependent on the income level and health state,and rural one-child families with low income level and poor health state need extensive attention from the social group.To sum up,combined with the current social background and urban-rural framework,this paper examines the influence of the number of children on the mental support of elderly parents,and complements the empirical research on the mental support of the elderly in the existing literature,It has certain guiding sig-nificance for micro families,government and society,and provides theoretical basis for China’s birth control and pension mechanism.