劳动经济学双周学术论坛第181期讲座通知-yb体育app官网

讲座题目：do fewer siblings lead to better mental health and subjective well-being? evidencefrom china’s family planning policies

摘要：using china’s family planning policies as natural experiments, we exploit the cohort-by-province variations in the policy exposure intensity to china’s “later, long, fewer” (llf) campaign and the “one-child policy” as exogenous shocks to individuals’ fertility choices and examine the long-term effects of the number of siblings on adults’ mental health and subjective well-being. we find that more siblings negatively affect adults’ mental health and subjective well-being, increasing the likelihood of depression and psychological distress, and lowering individuals’ life satisfaction and confidence about the future. these effects are more eminent among those with lower early-life socioeconomic status. these findings suggest that mental health is also subject to the theory of “quantity-quality tradeoff”. in the exploration of mechanisms, we find that having more siblings negatively affects adults’ physical health measured by the likelihood of being underweight, and lowers adults’ interactions with parents. interestingly, we find that being the only child also worsens adults’ mental health. this is consistent with the “only children disadvantage” theory that only children are worse in social skills and handling negative social relationships or stress due to being raised in families that lack sibling interactions, companionship, support, orpossibly parenting skills. we argue that, in the case of only children, these detrimental effects on mental health and subjective well-being might have dominated the benefit from the “quantity-quality tradeoff”. we find supportive evidence that adults without siblings are better in physical health and health behaviors, but are less agreeable, and more neurotic compared with those who have siblings. together, these seemingly contradictory findings reconcile the theory of “quantity-quality tradeoff” and the studies on the “only children disadvantage” and advance our understanding of the impacts of sibship size on mental health and subjective well-being. an optimal sibship size could be inferred from the evidence provided in the paper.

主讲人：郝壮 助理教授（北京航空航天大学）

讲座时间：2023年3月1日（周三）13:00—14:30

讲座地点：求是楼347会议室

讲座语言：中英文

主持人：王雪凝 讲师

参与人员：热烈欢迎广大师生参加。

主讲人简介：

郝壮，现任北京航空航天大学经济管理学院数量经济与商务统计系助理教授，于2018年在华盛顿州立大学取得经济学博士学位，研究方向为应用微观经济学、健康经济学、劳动经济学和教育经济学。近年来研究成果发表于american journal of health economics, economic inquiry, health economics等权威期刊。主持国家自然科学基金青年科学基金项目；主持北京航空航天大学人文社科青年骨干项目；参与科技部国家重点研发计划项目、国家自然科学基金重点项目、国家社科基金一般项目。研究成果得到了包括纽约时报（new york times）和美国国家公共广播电台（national public radio）在内的多家美国全国性权威媒体的关注和报道。