Essays on family structures, education, health and well-being in old age in China

Abstract

The first chapter investigates the health and social impacts of a new pension system in China. China initiated the new rural pension scheme targeting the large rural population in 2009. This new scheme was claimed to be a huge improvement to the previous welfare institution and a strong defense to rural people's elderly life. Using panel data from the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS), I apply the PSM-DID approach to identify causal relationships between the pension and multiple covariates at the individual level. I have found that the pension significantly reduced systolic and diastolic pressures, as well as improved overall health and life quality of participants. I acknowledge the positive influences of China's new rural pension on elderly life of the rural population, and discuss potential directions for future research.

The second chapter explores the impacts of co-residing grandparents on children from a Chinese perspective. The matrilateral bias hypothesis (MBH) implies that children may expect more supports from their maternal grandparents. Nevertheless, the current literature has not shed much light on how different genders are affected by grandparental lineage under the multi-generational coresidence context. In this chapter, I document and discuss lineage heterogeneity of grandparental impacts on grandchildren, and as well explore whether girls benefit more from the maternal grandparents than boys do. To resolve endogeneity bias where the standard IV approach is infeasible, I fit panel data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) into a fixed effects model and then apply the heteroskedasticity-based instruments of Lewbel (2012) as a robustness check. The results suggest that compared to direct interaction with co-residing grandparents, grandchildren are more likely to be influenced through parents. There are no consistent evidences for the MBH found.