Does China's Fertility Policy Induce Employment Discrimination against Women in Labor Market? A Nationwide Correspondence Experiment

Abstract We apply a two-wave nationwide correspondence experiment to assess the effects of the two-child and three-child policies on employment discrimination against women in China's labor market. Using 13,751 observations collected through this experiment, we find that the announcement of the two-child policy led to a 4.9% decrease in total interview callbacks overall, and decreases of 4.3%, 5.7%, and 5.6% for single women, those married with no children, and those married with one child, respectively. The implementation of the three-child policy led to a 10.4% decrease, but only for married women with two children. The callback rates of women who even didn't disclose marriage and fertility status information decreased by 4.5% under the universal two-child policy and 6.6% after the three-child policy. Our findings point to the importance of tailoring supplementary policy towards firms and women in specific group.