Family Size and Maternal Health: Evidence from the One-Child Policy in China
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In this paper, we examine the impact of family size on maternal health outcomes by exploiting the tremendous change in family size under the One-Child policy in China. Using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey 1993-2006, we find that mothers with fewer children have a higher calorie intake and a lower probability of being underweight and having low blood pressure; meanwhile, they have a higher probability of being overweight. This would occur if a smaller family size increases the food consumption of mothers, leading underweight women to attain a normal weight and normal weight women becoming overweight. Robust tests are performed to provide evidence on the hypothesis that the tradeoff between children's quantity and mother's "quality" is through a budget constraint mechanism, that is, having more children decreases the resource allocated to mothers and affects their health outcomes.
JOUR
Wu, Xiaoyu
Li, Lixing
2012
Journal of Population Economics
25
4
1341-1364
0933-1433
10.1007/s00148-011-0361-0
1069