The Impact of the One-Child Policy on the Well-Being of Chinese Children and Gender Differential

Guanghui Li, University of Washington

Although there has been much research on how the One-Child policy affected population growth in China, little is known about how attempts to restrict childbearing have affected Chinese families in other ways. This paper addresses this issue by presenting evidence from the China Health and Nutrition Survey. CHNS is a three-year panel data with detailed information on the One-Child policy variations in 190 communities from 1989 to 1993. This paper explores the relationship between the One-Child policy and the well-being of Chinese children by studying nutritional intakes and anthropometric measures of Chinese children. Of particular interest is how the one-child policy affected intra-household distribution between genders. The results indicate that the one-child policy improved Chinese children’ health status in general. However, the majority of the benefits went to boys in families with children of both sexes. Two significant factors that mitigate the gender discrimination are household income and maternal education.