This is an application from a new investigator to explore the consequences of population policy for child well-being using data from the People's Republic of China, where population policy is an important constraint on reproductive behavior. This research capitalizes on variation in the extent to which the one child policy mandates one child throughout China by using novel local-level measures of this policy to investigate the effects of policy characteristics on child care, child nutrition, and early childhood education. Data are from two sources including, first, four waves (1989, 1991, 1993, 1997) of the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) which includes panel data from 3800 households in 188 communities across eight provinces. The data include a combination of relevant contextual measures, such as local economic context and local characteristics of the one child policy, and individual measures for such variables as women's reproductive behavior and children's care, nutrition, and school arrangements. The second source includes 48 long discursive interviews focusing on child care issues and conducted in Hubei province by the Principal Investigator.
Three aims motivate this research: (1) To describe children's well-being using multiple outcomes for children age 1 to 6 and to investigate its relationship to variation in the implementation of one child policy; (2) to examine the link between local characteristics of the one child policy and individual fertility behavior and use of contraceptive method; and (3) to evaluate the effects of a gendered population policy on fertility behavior, contraceptive use, and child well-being.
| Short, Susan; Zhang, Fengyu (2004) Use of maternal health services in rural China. Popul Stud (Camb) 58:3-19 |
