Yu Xie

Bio: Yu Xie is an academic researcher from Princeton University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Population & China. The author has an hindex of 52, co-authored 180 publications receiving 12934 citations. Previous affiliations of Yu Xie include University of Michigan & University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Do sons or daughters give more money to parents? Gender and intergenerational support in contemporary urban China.

Abstract: The patriarchal structure of the traditional Chinese family suggests that sons more than daughters provide financial support to elderly parents. However the norm of receiving support in old age primarily from sons may have been undermined by dramatic demographic economic and cultural changes occurring over the last several decades in China especially in urban areas. We examine gender differences in financial support to parents provided by children using a recent dataset ("Study of Family Life in Urban China") collected in 1999 in three cities Shanghai Wuhan and Xian. In our analyses we pay particular attention to the interaction effects of gender and coresidential status. We also test three standard hypotheses for intergenerational support: the power model the exchange model and the altruism model. Interestingly the results show that married daughters especially those living with parents provide more financial support to parents than sons do. This significant gender difference can be primarily explained by daughters resources such as education and income. Our results lend empirical support to the altruism model but not to the other two models. (authors)

Is there a Chinese pattern of the second demographic transition?

Abstract: Abstract The Second Demographic Transition (SDT) is a useful theoretical framework for explaining the recent trend in many countries of very low fertility combined with alternative union and family types. Although past studies have observed the SDT in many Western societies, whether it is applicable to East Asia remains unclear. Capitalizing on data from the Chinese Census and China Family Panel Studies, we provide estimates of key behavioral and ideational indicators of the SDT. We find that union formation in China has trended increasingly toward patterns commonly observed in the West, including delayed age of marriage and the common practice of premarital cohabitation. While having a lowest-low fertility rate, China has not experienced rising nonmarital childbirths, a key component of the SDT. However, we observe growing tolerance toward nonmarital childbearing and childlessness. Marriages remain relatively stable in China, especially among couples with children. Taken together, our analysis suggests that typically coincident changes in patterns of family behavior associated with the SDT are not occurring simultaneously in China. Moreover, ideational changes are preceding behavioral changes, particularly in attitudes toward nonmarital childbearing and childlessness. Our research suggests a different pattern of the SDT in China, which has been heavily influenced by Confucian culture.

The logit model the probit model and response-based samples.

Abstract: It is well known that the choice of the probit versus the logit model is usually inconsequential for analyzing binary response from random samples and samples stratified on exogenous variables There is reason to suspect however that the choice between these 2 types of models has serious consequences when the sample is response-based A response-based sample is 1 that is stratified on the discrete variable of outcome This paper shows that in the context of response-based samples the conventional wisdom is incorrect The paper 1st discusses the problem of model specification Secondly it formally states the estimation problem from response-based samples and briefly introduces the Manski-Lerman weighted maximum likelihood estimations solution It then reports the asymptotic bias of alternative estimators under response-based sampling Finally it presents a Monte Carlo experiment that provides evidence on small sample bias and precision The choice between the probit and logit models is shown to be a real concern for estimation from response-based samples If the true model is logit the ordinary maximum likelihood procedure yields the best asymptotic unbiased estimator But even a small misspecification of the model say approximating the probit by the logit renders the maximum likelihood estimator biased Therefore care must be taken when the researcher analyzes response-based samples A conservative approach is always to use a weighted maximum likelihood procedure even for the logit model

Has smoking really declined in China

Abstract: It has been reported that the prevalence of smoking among Chinese men has decreased substantially in recent decades. Using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) (1991–2009) and the triple standardization method, we assess this trend and the relative contributions to it from three explanatory factors – age, whether the person has ever smoked, and smoking cessation. Results do show that the prevalence of smoking among Chinese men has decreased noticeably during the study period. Furthermore, the decrease in the proportion of men who have ever smoked is the single most important factor accounting for most of the decline. The contributions of the changes in age structure and in smoking cessation are small. Hence, we conclude that a decline in smoking among Chinese men is a real historical change and not an artefact of the survey methodology or the changes in age structure.

Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks

Abstract: Similarity breeds connection. This principle—the homophily principle—structures network ties of every type, including marriage, friendship, work, advice, support, information transfer, exchange, comembership, and other types of relationship. The result is that people's personal networks are homogeneous with regard to many sociodemographic, behavioral, and intrapersonal characteristics. Homophily limits people's social worlds in a way that has powerful implications for the information they receive, the attitudes they form, and the interactions they experience. Homophily in race and ethnicity creates the strongest divides in our personal environments, with age, religion, education, occupation, and gender following in roughly that order. Geographic propinquity, families, organizations, and isomorphic positions in social systems all create contexts in which homophilous relations form. Ties between nonsimilar individuals also dissolve at a higher rate, which sets the stage for the formation of niches (localize...

Bayesian Model Selection in Social Research

Abstract: It is argued that P-values and the tests based upon them give unsatisfactory results, especially in large samples. It is shown that, in regression, when there are many candidate independent variables, standard variable selection procedures can give very misleading results. Also, by selecting a single model, they ignore model uncertainty and so underestimate the uncertainty about quantities of interest. The Bayesian approach to hypothesis testing, model selection, and accounting for model uncertainty is presented. Implementing this is straightforward through the use of the simple and accurate BIC approximation, and it can be done using the output from standard software. Specific results are presented for most of the types of model commonly used in sociology. It is shown that this approach overcomes the difficulties with P-values and standard model selection procedures based on them. It also allows easy comparison of nonnested models, and permits the quantification of the evidence for a null hypothesis of interest, such as a convergence theory or a hypothesis about societal norms.

A Treatise on the Family

Abstract: A Treatise on the Family. G. S. Becker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1981. Gary Becker is one of the most famous and influential economists of the second half of the 20th century, a fervent contributor to and expounder of the University of Chicago free-market philosophy, and winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics. Although any book with the word "treatise" in its title is clearly intended to have an impact, one coming from someone as brilliant and controversial as Becker certainly had such a lofty goal. It has received many article-length reviews in several disciplines (Ben-Porath, 1982; Bergmann, 1995; Foster, 1993; Hannan, 1982), which is one measure of its scholarly importance, and yet its impact is, I think, less than it may have initially appeared, especially for scholars with substantive interests in the family. This book is, its title notwithstanding, more about economics and the economic approach to behavior than about the family. In the first sentence of the preface, Becker writes "In this book, I develop an economic or rational choice approach to the family." Lest anyone accuse him of focusing on traditional (i.e., material) economics topics, such as family income, poverty, and labor supply, he immediately emphasizes that those topics are not his focus. "My intent is more ambitious: to analyze marriage, births, divorce, division of labor in households, prestige, and other non-material behavior with the tools and framework developed for material behavior." Indeed, the book includes chapters on many of these issues. One chapter examines the principles of the efficient division of labor in households, three analyze marriage and divorce, three analyze various child-related issues (fertility and intergenerational mobility), and others focus on broader family issues, such as intrafamily resource allocation. His analysis is not, he believes, constrained by time or place. His intention is "to present a comprehensive analysis that is applicable, at least in part, to families in the past as well as the present, in primitive as well as modern societies, and in Eastern as well as Western cultures." His tone is profoundly conservative and utterly skeptical of any constructive role for government programs. There is a clear sense of how much better things were in the old days of a genderbased division of labor and low market-work rates for married women. Indeed, Becker is ready and able to show in Chapter 2 that such a state of affairs was efficient and induced not by market or societal discrimination (although he allows that it might exist) but by small underlying household productivity differences that arise primarily from what he refers to as "complementarities" between caring for young children while carrying another to term. Most family scholars would probably find that an unconvincingly simple explanation for a profound and complex phenomenon. What, then, is the salient contribution of Treatise on the Family? It is not literally the idea that economics could be applied to the nonmarket sector and to family life because Becker had already established that with considerable success and influence. At its core, microeconomics is simple, characterized by a belief in the importance of prices and markets, the role of self-interested or rational behavior, and, somewhat less centrally, the stability of preferences. It was Becker's singular and invaluable contribution to appreciate that the behaviors potentially amenable to the economic approach were not limited to phenomenon with explicit monetary prices and formal markets. Indeed, during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, he did undeniably important and pioneering work extending the domain of economics to such topics as labor market discrimination, fertility, crime, human capital, household production, and the allocation of time. Nor is Becker's contribution the detailed analyses themselves. Many of them are, frankly, odd, idiosyncratic, and off-putting. …

Economic growth and income inequality

Abstract: We investigate whether income inequality affects subsequent growth in a cross-country sample for 1965-90, using the models of Barro (1997), Bleaney and Nishiyama (2002) and Sachs and Warner (1997), with negative results. We then investigate the evolution of income inequality over the same period and its correlation with growth. The dominating feature is inequality convergence across countries. This convergence has been significantly faster amongst developed countries. Growth does not appear to influence the evolution of inequality over time. Outline