AcAdemic archive
Dr. Keyu Jin is an associate professor of Economics at the London school of Economics. She is from Beijing, China, and holds a B.A., M.A. and Phd from Harvard University.
Her research is on international economics - such as why capital flows from poor to rich countries, how the global implications of U.S. monetary and fiscal policies have changed; as well as on how the rise of China impacts the global economy, from several perspectives - trade, capital flows, global interest rates and saving, demographics, productivity and technology.
Dr. Keyu’s book, The New China Playbook, is available now.
The One-Child Policy and Household Saving
We investigate whether the ‘one-child policy’ has contributed to the rise in China’s household saving rate and human capital in recent decades. In a life-cycle model with intergenerational transfers and human capital accumulation, fertility restrictions lower expected old-age support coming from children—inducing parents to raise saving and education investment in their offspring. Quantitatively, the policy can account for at least 30% of the rise in aggregate saving. Using the birth of twins under the policy as an empirical out-of-sample check to the theory, we find that quantitative estimates on saving and education decisions line up well with micro-data.
Taha Choukhmane - Yale
Nicolas Coeurdacier
SciencesPo and CEPR
Keyu Jin - London School of Economics
Journal of European Economic Association, 2023
Abstract
We investigate whether the ‘one-child policy’ has contributed to the rise in China’s household saving rate and human capital in recent decades. In a life-cycle model with intergenerational transfers and human capital accumulation, fertility restrictions lower expected old-age support coming from children—inducing parents to raise saving and education investment in their offspring. Quantitatively, the policy can account for at least 30% of the rise in aggregate saving. Using the birth of twins under the policy as an empirical out-of-sample check to the theory, we find that quantitative estimates on saving and education decisions line up well with micro-data.