1.Title:China's family planning reforms and women's mental health and subjective wellbeing

2.Speaker:郝壮

3.Abstract:

In response to the declining birth rate, the Chinese government has begun a series of relaxations in its family planning policies. Existing literature has confirmed that relaxing fertility policies will increase fertility. As additional childbirth may affect women’s family production and labor market productivity, these reforms may affect women's mental health and subjective well-being. In this paper, we use the data from 2010 to 2020 China Family Panel Survey (CFPS) and adopt a difference-in-differences method to examine how China's family planning reforms affect women's mental health and subjective well-being. We find that the relaxation of the one-child policy in 2013 led to a decrease in women’s life satisfaction and deterioration in mental health measured by the Center of Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). These effects are robust to different model specifications. Women with lower income and educational levels are disproportionately affected by the policies. In addition, we find that the statistical discrimination in the labor market may be the main driving factor, but there is no evidence suggesting that household production time is affected by the policy reforms. We recommend supporting measures to improve women's mental health and subjective well-being in the short run.

4.About Speaker：

郝壮，北京航空航天大学经济管理学院助理教授，于2018年在华盛顿州立大学取得经济学博士学位，研究方向为健康经济学、劳动经济学和教育经济学。近年来多篇研究成果发表于American Journal of Health Economics, Economic Inquiry, Health Economics等权威期刊。主持国家自然科学基金青年科学基金项目和北京航空航天大学人文社科青年骨干项目；参与国家自然科学基金重点项目、国家社科基金一般项目。研究成果得到了包括纽约时报（New York Times）和美国国家公共广播电台（National Public Radio）在内的多家权威媒体的关注和报道。

5.时间：2023.12.14 周四中午12:30-13:45

6.地点：学术会堂（南楼）608