ECONOMIC GROWTH CENTER
                                
                        YALE UNIVERSITY
                                
                                
                        P.O. Box 208269
               New Haven, Connecticut 06520-8269
                                
                                
                 CENTER DISCUSSION PAPER NO.804
                                
                                
     THE IMPACT OF INSTITUTIONAL REFORM FROM 1979 TO 1987 
                  ON FERTILITY IN RURAL CHINA
                                
                                
                                
                        T. Paul Schultz
                        Yale University
                                
                            Zeng Yi
                        Duke University
                                
                                
                                
                           June 1999

     
 Note: Center Discussion Papers are preliminary materials circulated to stimulate discussions and critical
       comments. The authors are listed alphabetically, and they share equally in the research design and
       analysis.  We thank the department of Population Statistics of the State Statistical Bureau of China
       for assisting in the data collection and the Rockefeller Foundation for providing financial support
       for the data collection and this investigation.  Part of the work was completed while Zeng Yi was
       a visiting research scientist at the Economic Growth Center of Yale University, Institute of Asian
       Studies at University of British Columbia, and an adjunct professor at Humphrey Institute of
       University of Minnesota, and their institutional support is appreciated.  We are grateful to Ma
       Zhongdong and Wang Zhenglian for their efficient help and comments on the data analysis, for the
       programming assistance of Paul McGuire, the comments on an earlier version of this paper by
       William Lavely, Paul T.K. Lin, Justin Yifu Lin, Terry McGee, and Nina P. Halpern.  T. Paul
       Schultz, Box 208269.  New Haven, CT 06520-8269, USA; Zeng Yi, Max Planck Institute for
       Demographic Research, Doberaner Str. 114, D-18057, Rostock, Germany.



                           Abstract 

 This empirical study brings together data on the local timing of the rural household responsibility
 system (HRS) reforms in China from 1979 to 1987, and assesses the association of the local
 reforms with individual parity-specific fertility changes as measured in the in-depth-fertility
 survey.  Fertility appears to have increased slightly in 1982-84, but declined in 1985-87, in the
 wake of these significant economic reforms.  It is hypothesized that the reforms increased the
 private monetary and opportunity cost of childbearing, intensified market competition for the
 adoption of new production technologies that encouraged parents to better educate their children,
 while increasing the mobility of the rural labor force and thereby discouraging and delaying
 childbearing among rural Chinese.