Fertility Decline and Trends in Educational Gender Inequality in China

Fertility decline reduces sibship size and alters sib-ship configuration, thereby bearing important implications for intra-household resource allocation for children’s education. Analyses of the data from China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) reveal that, women with more siblings are more disadvantaged in years of schooling compared to men, especially if they have younger brothers and sisters. Estimates from both instrumental variable approach and family fixed-effect models confirm the causal effect of sibship size on education. Such women’s disadvantages in schooling tend to diminish over time as the younger cohorts tended to have fewer siblings than their older counterparts. This study provides a new perspective to understanding the gender stratification dynamics and the unintended consequence of rapid fertility change in China since 1970s.