Children, old-age support and pension in rural China
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the substitute between social old-age insurance and adult children in providing old-age support, and estimate the effects of China’s old rural pension program (ORPP) on sex ratio.
Design/methodology/approach
Using data from China’s 2005 inter-census population survey and China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, this paper estimates the effects of children on rural parents’ take-up of pension program and the effects of having access to pension on old parents’ choice of resource for future old-age support. The effects of China’s ORPP on sex ratio are estimated using difference-in-differences identification strategy.
Findings
Peasants having sons are less likely to participate in pension program and each additional son and daughter significantly decreases their likelihood of participation. Moreover, the effect of sons is much larger than that of daughters. Peasants having access to pension are less likely to rely on their children for old-age support. The implementation of the ORPP moderately decreased sex ratio.
Social implications
Implementing pension program in China’s rural area will probably affect rural people’s fertility behavior and thus be helpful in correcting sex ratio bias.
Originality/value
This paper first estimates the effects of having access to pension on old parents’ choices of providers of old-age support, and estimates the causal effect of rural pension on sex ratio using standard DID strategy.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The author is grateful to the helpful comments from Yaohui Zhao, Yang Yao, Yi Zeng, Xiaoyan Lei, Avraham Ebenstein and the participants in Labor Workshop at CCER at Peking University, CES 2011 conference. Financial supports from Natural Science Foundation of China (71130002), Beijing Social Science Foundation (14JDJGB047), National Institute of Health of the United States and World Bank for China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study are highly acknowledged.
Citation
Zhang, C. (2015), "Children, old-age support and pension in rural China", China Agricultural Economic Review, Vol. 7 No. 3, pp. 405-420. https://doi.org/10.1108/CAER-01-2014-0003
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2015, Emerald Group Publishing Limited