This study considers the experience of china's one-child policy to examine how fertility restrictions affect economic and social outcomes over a lifetime. Using variations in these penalties across provinces and over time, we find that exposure to stricter fertility restrictions when young leads to higher education levels, more white-collar jobs, delayed marriage, and lower fertility rates. Further consequences include lower rates of residing with the elderly and higher household income, consumption, and savings. Finally, exposure to stricter fertility restrictions in early life increases female empowerment. Overall, fertility restrictions imposed when people are young have powerful effects throughout their life cycle.

We investigate how the presence of a college affects local educational attainment. As counterfactuals for current college locations, we use historical “runner-up” locations that were strongly considered to become college sites but were ultimately not chosen. We find that winning counties today have college degree attainment rates 56% higher than runner-up counties and more private-sector employment in human-capital-intensive industries. These effects are not driven primarily by recent in-migration of educated adults, and alternative public investments did not have similar effects on local educational attainment. The results indicate that colleges played an important role in shaping long-run local outcomes.

This paper examines an unintended response to the one-child policy in China: births of twins. Analysis of population census data shows that the one-child policy has accounted for more than one-third of the increase in the reported births of twins since the 1970s. Investigation using birth spacing with prior births and height difference within twins suggests that the increase in the birth of twins is partly due to parents reporting regularly spaced children as twins to avoid the policy violation punishment. The study highlights the possibility of individual behavioral response to undesirable government policies and the potential social consequences.