第140期岳麓经贸学术论坛

题目：SexRatio and Timing of the First Marriage: Evidence from theOne-and-A-Half-Children Policy in China

主讲人：姚羽欣（香港岭南大学经济系访问助理教授）

主持人：邓卫广（湖南大学经贸学院助理教授）

时间：2018年6月7日（周四）10:00-11:30

地点：湖南大学财院校区行政楼401

主讲简介

姚羽欣，香港岭南大学经济系 访问助理教授（Visiting Assistant Professor）、荷兰蒂尔堡大学（Tilburg University）博士。

姚羽欣博士的研究领域包括Labor Economics, Applied Econometrics, Economics of Education,Demographic Economics。姚博士的研究成果发表在国际著名期刊Economics of Education Review，LabourEconomics。姚博士将与我们分享最新的经济学研究方法，尤其是劳动经济学的研究范式，如同群效应研究。

内容简介

This paper studies how sex imbalance in themarriage market affects the timing of the first marriage. As a major relaxationof the one-child policy in China during the 1980s, the“one-and-a-half-children” policy was implemented to allow extra births, conditionalon the gender of the first child. Rural residents are allowed to have a secondchild only if the first child is female. Due to the stronger son preference athigher order births, this policy change increases the incentive of parents tohave male children rather than female children and conduct sex-selectiveabortions. Thus, this led to a male-biased sex ratio at birth in the 1980s andan excess supply of males in marriage market after 2000. Based on data fromChina Family Panel Studies 2014 and the Chinese Census 2000, I estimate theeffect of sex ratio on the timing of the first marriage by exploiting theexogenous variation of the policy implementation across regions and cohorts.From a difference-in-difference approach with mixture proportional hazard models,I find that the first marriage is significantly delayed in regions with a highsex ratio. The delaying effects are significant for both males and females,though less significant and smaller for females. The fact that females alsodelay the first marriage is because they set a higher reservation wage inresponse to an excess supply of males in the marriage market.