IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/applec/v57y2025i13p1510-1525.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Children’s gender and parents’ long-term care arrangements: evidence from China

Author

Listed:
  • Huasheng Gao
  • Rui Li
  • Jianhong Shen
  • Huiting Yang

Abstract

There has been a puzzle in China that despite the increasingly ageing population in recent years, the demand for nursing homes continues to decline. This paper provides a new explanation of this puzzle from the perspective of children’s gender composition. Using the gender of the firstborn child as an exogenous variable, we find that having a male firstborn child significantly reduces the willingness of parents to live in nursing homes for long-term care. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that parents with only one child and those living in rural areas or areas with a high number of scandals related to nursing homes are more likely to be negatively affected. Mechanism analysis reveals two channels for this effect: traditional beliefs and children’s economic capabilities.

Suggested Citation

  • Huasheng Gao & Rui Li & Jianhong Shen & Huiting Yang, 2025. "Children’s gender and parents’ long-term care arrangements: evidence from China," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 57(13), pages 1510-1525, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:57:y:2025:i:13:p:1510-1525
    DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2024.2313594
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2024.2313594
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00036846.2024.2313594?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:57:y:2025:i:13:p:1510-1525. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RAEC20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.