子女性别与父母幸福感

The Gender of Children and Parents' Happiness

中国的市场化深刻转型和经济快速发展极大地增强了女性的经济社会地位,女儿更有能力提升父母的福利;但同时由于从传统社会向现代社会的转型尚未彻底完成,传统农业文明下形成的"重男轻女"观念仍然存在,因此女儿是否给父母带来比儿子更多的幸福感,就仍然是一个有待检验的经验问题。本文利用中国综合社会调查(CGSS)2008年数据定量研究子女性别对父母幸福感的影响。借助第一胎子女性别的外生性,本文发现,在子女的婴幼儿以及中小学读书阶段,子女性别对父母幸福感无显著影响;而到了子女的结婚生子阶段,儿子带给父母的幸福感比女儿显著更低。特别地,本文没有发现儿子通过"养儿防老"渠道给父母带来更高幸福感的证据:分析显示女儿带给老年父母的幸福感也比儿子更高,这对于有养老保险的父母尤为显著;但发现了父母因为"助儿买房"而损失幸福感的证据:城市里更高房价让男孩父母的幸福感更低。

Summary： The notion of happiness as the ＂hidden wealth of nations＂ has drawn increasing attention worldwide. This paper investigates whether and how the gender of children affects the happiness of Chinese parents. These questions are particularly interesting in current China, as Chinese society has both a long tradition of farming practice and patriarchal culture and has experienced substantial transformation. In the agrarian epoch, sons brought more happiness to parents, as men are naturally more capable of home production and kinship finance. In recent decades, China＇s market-oriented reforms have handed over the majority of productive and financial activities to enterprises and markets, which has improved the comparative economic situation of women. Along with the fact that women are better at providing emotional support and physical care, daughters are now expected to have a more positive effect on parents＇ happiness. In addition, the serious gender imbalance has created intense competition for men in the marriage market, which may potentially lower the happiness of families with sons. However, market-oriented reforms and social transformation are far from over. The relatively closed and personalized networks and the open and impersonal market mechanism both play important roles in organizing economic activities. It remains an open question whether daughters indeed bring their parents more happiness compared with sons. Using the 2008 Chinese General Social Survey （CGSS） data, the paper provides an empirical test. The major challenge of this analysis is that the gender of children may be manipulated due to the traditional son preference and the family planning policy of China. The gender selection of children can be correlated with other factors that may influence parents＇ happiness and cause omitted variable bias. We alleviate this problem by exploiting the plausible exogeneity of the gender of the first-born child. Studies have shown that parents generally welcome their first-born child regardless of gender and seldom exert gender selection for their first-born child. This is especially the case in rural areas, where a second-born child is officially allowed if the first-born is a girl according to the ＂one-and-a-half children＂ policy. A robustness check using a subsample from rural areas can strengthen our results. We find that the gender of the first-born has a non-trivial effect on parents＇ happiness. In general, sons are found to bring less happiness than daughters in all of the specifications--OLS regressions, ordered logistic regressions, IV estimations, and related robustness tests. But results vary with children＇s age. Parents＇ happiness is not affected when children are young or when they are in primary and middle schools （0 -16 years old）. However, sons are correlated with lower levels of parents＇ happiness when it is time to worry about career and marriage （17 -30 years old）. The analysis of the subsample of elderly parents exhibits a similar pattern： parents with daughters are happier than those with sons. The effect is more evident for elderly mothers （compared with fathers） or elderly urban parents （compared with rural parents）. Furthermore, our data lend no support to the idea that parents lean on sons for family care when they get old. First, ira terms of living arrangements, parents are equally likely to live with sons as with daughters. Second, in terms of financial support, for parents who are covered by social security programs, sons bring significantly less happiness than daughters. However, for parents without social security, the effect is smaller in magnitude and becomes statistically insignificant. These results suggest that the traditional idea of the ＂nurture-in-exchange-for-support effect＂ has already faded in today＇s Chinese families. Instead, there exists a ＂nurture-up-to-housing-support effect＂ in urban areas： an increase in housing prices reduces more severely the happiness of parents with sons. This result is consistent with the hypothesis that urban parents with sons bear the pressure of their sons in the marriage market competition and worry more about higher housing prices.