题目：Gender Differences in Parental Investments and Intergenerational Transfers in China

报告人：雷晓燕

时间：2016年10月11日上午10:30-12:00

地点：暨南大学中惠楼106B

主办方：暨南大学经济与社会研究院

报告人简介：

雷晓燕，北京大学国家发展研究院副教授、北京大学健康老龄与发展研究中心常务副主任，1997年获中国人民大学经济学学士学位，2003年和2007年分别获美国加利福尼亚大学洛杉矶校区硕士和博士学位。主要研究领域包括劳动经济学，健康经济学，应用计量学。曾在Review of Economics and Statistics, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Population Economics, Economic Development and Cultural Change等国内外一流期刊上发表学术论文。她担任Journal of Labor Economics, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Health Economics, Demography, Economic Development and Cultural Change等期刊审稿人。

Abstract：

Using the Chinese Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), we examine parental investment in their children and later repayment from children to their parents. We find strong evidence of son preference in rural areas of China in terms of investments in education, but substantially less favoritism in urban areas where market opportunities for women are likely to be greater. Similarly, the preference for investment in sons is far larger among older cohorts than younger. In fact, for recent urban cohorts of children, the pattern of greater educational investments for boys than girls actually reverses itself and follows the pattern of many developed countries with girls attending college at greater rates than boys. We also find evidence that while sons do “repay” their parents to some extent with transfers in later life. While we observe only a portion of the life course, this repayment appears to be small in relation to the amount initially received. Furthermore, in urban areas, net transfers to children do not differ significantly by the child’s gender, but son in rural areas continue to receive more than daughters even when factoring in the “upstream” transfers. These results suggest strongly that the economic growth, most prominent in urban regions, may be beginning to chip away at the long-held preference towards sons, or at least may be leading to smaller overt differences in treatment of sons and daughters.