Self-Reinforcing Gender Equality from Labor Market to Child Health

Tonglong Zhang, Hainan University

Achieving gender equality is a key driver of broader social progress. But can promoting gender equality trigger a virtuous circle, or become self-reinforcing? We develop an intergenerational mechanism in which improvements in women’s labor-market outcomes raise parental investment in children’s health, especially for girls, thereby strengthening equality in the next generation. Using Chinese microdata and variation in female-to-male income ratios induced by gendered labor-demand shocks, we estimate that a one–standard deviation improve in the income ratio increases children’s height-for-age z-scores by 0.032 standard deviations (equivalent to 0.48 cm at age seven). The positive effect is stronger for girls, who are 0.029 standard deviations more affected than boys. Heterogeneity analyses show that the mechanism operates primarily in areas with more modern living conditions, higher parental labor-force participation, and weaker son-preference norms. These results imply that gender equality can reproduce and strengthen itself over time, with dynamic and long-term impacts.

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 Presented in Session 59. Reproduction, Population, and the Modern State in South and East Asia