Do Child-bearing Age People Respond to Free Childcare Service? Evidence from a Field Experiment in China

Both Do Child-bearing Age People Respond to Free Childcare Service? Evidence from a Field Experiment in China

Li Mo-Yuan; Li Jun-Rui; Feng Yu-Xuan

Our team conducted a randomized experiment of great significance to determine the impact of a free government-provided childcare service on fertility decisions made by childbearing-age people from different age, education and income groups in China. Our quest was to uncover whether and which forms of government policy would alter the decisions of these people. As we delved deeper into our investigation, we discovered that enlightening our subjects on these government-provided childcare projects could lead to a 25.63% increase in their intention to have another child. This served as a tangible representation of the fertility rate enhancement, which is exactly the goal of China’s social policy since 2013. Furthermore, we unearthed that when presented with such a policy (the treatment), subjects from the middle income group with 1 child, who are the majority in the population and contributed the most to China’s birth rate decline, displayed a tendency to react a lot more significantly. However, based on our result, we observed that the policy‘s effectiveness on subjects with more than 2 children or with very high monthly income is less significant. Therefore, we conclude that childbearing-age people in China are indeed receptive to the free childcare service project, which could help them to deal with both their financial and time pressure of bearing children. Nevertheless, it appears that the policy’s effect is heterogeneous, thus should be more accurately targeted on certain groups to maintain maximum return on investment.