Keyu Jin

98% of urban households had only one child.

The other 2% are twins, which you're allowed to keep, thank goodness, if you had the good fortune of giving birth to twins.

It had lots of unintended consequences on the economy and society as well.

Maybe on the good side, it's actually a golden age for Chinese women because the Chinese girls never had as much education investment apportioned to them as they've had after being the only child in the family.

And you raised a daughter like a son.

And if we look at all the skill gaps and the education gaps and the returns to education, actually, girls fared better.

Apart from the top, top, top leadership in the Chinese political class, you look at the CEOs of major companies, in the ministry, civil servants, there are a lot of Chinese women there.

And actually, recently, if you look at the surveys, the Chinese families would prefer to have a daughter than a son because they've seen how much bargaining power you as a Chinese woman and as a rare bride or husband.

a scarce supply of brides goes, you have raised your bargaining power and you can command high amounts of dowry.

That was an unintended good thing about the one-child policy.

And to the opposite, the recent relaxation of the one-child policy, actually, women are now encouraged to have as many kids as they possibly can.

The flip side of the one-child policy has not necessarily been good to women in the job market because they think

Oh, well, you've only had one child.

Oh, guess what?

You can have another child.

So that's not necessarily good for long-term employability.

But on the economic side, I've written about this in my academic papers.

It's been one of the very important causes of high saving rate.

I always tell people, you want to stimulate consumption, we'll have more kids.

You know how much one of those costs, right?