The One-Child Policy on Timing of First Births and Prenatal Sex Selection in China

China’s one-child policy was introduced to alleviate pressing social and economic problems stemming from rapid population growth. From a program evaluation perspective, one can treat the one-child policy as a natural experiment because it was strictly enforced among the Han majority while ethnic minorities were mostly exempted. This paper is to examine how the one-child policy influenced fertility by the timing of first birth between 1990 and 2005. Using 2005 Chinese1% mini-census data, we employ the difference-in-differences method to compare the timing gap between couple’s first marriage and first births among Han and non-Han Chinese over time. The results show the effects of One-Child Policy are mainly for Han Chinese with only one child in rural area. These couples intentionally delay their birth of son for 4.4 months and their birth of daughter for 7.3 months. Moreover, it indicates they intentionally choose son as their only child via ultrasound devices.