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Testing the Only-Child Advantage in Cognitive Development in the Context of China’s One-Child Policy

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Abstract

Using data from a recent national survey of approximately 20,000 Chinese middle school students, we tested the difference in cognitive development between only-children and children with siblings using non-parametric matching method. We took advantage of the massive increase in involuntary only-child families in China under the one-child family planning policy (1979–2015) to reduce the bias introduced by the otherwise pervasive human tendency to avoid having only one child. Our average treatment effect for the treated estimates indicates no significant cognitive difference between only-children and children with siblings. Further subgroup analyses, however, suggest that such average effect estimates can conceal important population heterogeneities because the only-child effect on cognitive development changes drastically between subgroups of the same population. Among other potential moderating factors, birth order and gender play particularly important roles in this process.

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Notes

  1. The CEPS data, including the cognitive test information, and complete questionnaire and design documents are publicly available from the project web site (http://chinaeps.org/).

  2. For symmetric and unimodal distribution, 95% HDI coincides with 95% confidence interval (CI). However, with non-unimodal or non-symmetric distribution, HDI has better theoretical properties than CI (Hyndman 1996).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Queens College & CUNY Institute for Demographic Research, City University of New York, New York, USA

    Shige Song

  2. Department of Sociology & National Survey Research Center, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China

    Weidong Wang

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  1. Shige Song
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  2. Weidong Wang
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Correspondence to Shige Song.

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Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13.

Table 8 Testing the moderation effect of gender on the estimated difference in math, verbal, and visual test scores between only-children and children with siblings (both firstborn and non-firstborn)
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Table 9 Testing the moderation effect of gender on the estimated difference in math, verbal, and visual test scores between only-children and children with siblings (firstborn only)
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Table 10 Testing the moderation effect of gender on the estimated difference in math, verbal, and visual test scores between only-children and children with siblings (non-firstborn only)
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Table 11 Testing the moderation effect of Hukou on the estimated cognitive difference between only-children and children with siblings (both firstborn and non-firstborn)
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Table 12 Testing the moderation effect of hukou on the estimated cognitive difference between only-children and firstborn children with younger siblings
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Table 13 Testing the moderation effect of hukou on the estimated cognitive difference between only-children and non-firstborn children with older siblings
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Song, S., Wang, W. Testing the Only-Child Advantage in Cognitive Development in the Context of China’s One-Child Policy. Popul Res Policy Rev 38, 841–867 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-019-09556-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-019-09556-9

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