Melbourne Institute's PhD Candidates Presentations

Presenter: Xinran Hu‪
supervised by Jan Kabátek (Melbourne Institute) and Victoria Baranov (Department of Economics).

Title: Fertility Policy Relaxation and Intra-Household Bargaining: Evidence from China's One-Child Policy Generation

Abstract: What shapes the bargaining positions of the husband and wife within a family? This paper explores the effect of changes in fertility restriction policies on the intra-household bargaining of individuals born under the policy in their later life using the Chinese context. Starting from the mid-1980s, China carried out a partial relaxation to their compulsory One-Child Policy that allowed rural households to have two children if their first child happened to be female. Using a staggered difference-in-differences design, I found that while the relaxation did not worsen the sex ratio distortion in China, it improved the bargaining position of women born under the policy in that they enjoy more leisure and a smaller burden of both housework and labor.

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Presenter: Monir Moniruzzaman‪
supervised by Reshad Ahsan (Department of Economics) and Diana Contreras Suárez (Melbourne Institute).

Title: Mitigating Gender Disparities: Role of Labour Market Opportunity

Abstract: Discriminatory behaviour against women is one of the key obstacles for development and growth in the developing countries. This thesis examines how employment opportunity help mitigate the gender disparities. I measure employment opportunity in terms of spatial exposure to export jobs. The first chapter of this thesis explains how an option for outside jobs affect the gender gap in manufacturing employment. In second chapter I examine the impact of a paid employment opportunity on son preference, a big reason for discriminatory behaviour against women. I plan to explore the gendered impact of work opportunity on quality employment in the third chapter. I find that a paid employment opportunity significantly reduces the gender gap in manufacturing employment. Moreover, I find such employment option to significantly reduce the tendency of preferring sons over daughters. More interestingly, for both manufacturing employment and son preference, the size of the spillover impact is much larger compared to the direct impact of work opportunity. I conclude by stating that a paid employment option for women helps raise the `value of the girls’ in the society and mitigate the gender disparities against them.

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