Anson Zhou

This paper studies the macroeconomic consequences of family policies in a heterogeneous-agent general equilibrium overlapping generations model. The model features endogenous fertility, child human capital formation, a multi-period demographic structure, and age-dependent government transfers. I show that fertility elasticities across the human capital distribution play a central role in shaping the policy implications through the quantity-quality trade-off, composition effects, and demographic structure effects. I calibrate the model to match the U.S. data and validate it using empirical estimates of fertility elasticities. In policy counterfactuals, I find that baby bonuses and paid leaves raise fertility and average welfare at the expense of human capital. In contrast, public education expansion reconciles fertility, human capital, and welfare objectives. The results also underscore the large distributional consequences of family policies in the cross-section and along the transition path. 

This paper studies the nexus among fertility, family structure, and gender income equality. Using the dartboard approach in Ellison and Glaeser (1997), I document a novel three-way trade-off in the data: simultaneously achieving high fertility, low single parenthood, and gender income equality is unlikely at all levels of economic development. To explain this fact, I develop a unified theory where the trade-off endogenously arises in equilibrium. Among various policy instruments, I show that reducing women’s child-rearing costs stands out as the unique one that could mitigate the trade-off, but the policy costs grow as wages increase. Calibrating the model to Mexico’s transition path as a proof of concept, I find that gender-neutral technological progress explains half of rising single parenthood and declining fertility, while gender-biased productivity growth and the gender education gap reversal account for the narrowing gender income and welfare gaps.

Many governments around the world struggle with below-replacement fertility rates. Using historical data, we document that fertility is more responsive to anti-fertility policies than to pro-fertility ones. While canonical models with smooth Marshallian demand have difficulty explaining this phenomenon, we show that the asymmetry is consistent with a theory of fertility choice under reference-dependent preferences. In a dynamic economy where the reference point is endogenously formed, the theory offers a “slippery slope” perspective: fertility rates could fall even when the underlying economic fundamentals remain unchanged. Complementary to existing studies, our framework provides a new angle to interpret the recent global fertility decline. It also suggests that governments concerned with population externalities have a precautionary motive to set a higher fertility rate target than previously thought. 

This paper studies fertility as the outcome of a tug-of-war between gender-biased technological progress and social norms around the gender division of childcare. We construct a fertility choice model that features endogenous social norm formation, shaped by the collective opinions of all cohorts. Consistent with our model, cross-country data show that fertility declines more rapidly in economies undergoing rapid structural transformation, and this relationship is more pronounced in societies with tighter or less adaptive social norms. Calibrated to South Korean data, our model indicates that in the context of rapid structural transformation, strong social pressure and the reluctance to adapt exacerbate fertility declines and reinforce rigid norms. We also demonstrate that while subsidies for female childcare offer larger short-run fertility increases, male childcare subsidies yield greater long-term gains by accelerating the transition to a more egalitarian steady state. 

This paper studies the general equilibrium effects of teachers on income inequality. I propose that declining teacher quality amplifies income inequality through three channels: (1) lower human capital supply in future generations raises the skill premium, disproportionately benefiting high-skill workers – the price channel; (2) scarce education services exacerbate human capital inequalities due to parental competition – the quantity channel; and (3) declining teacher quality compounds over time – the dynamic channel. In the calibrated model, I find that such general equilibrium channels generate large differences between short-run and long-run, and between partial and general equilibrium effects of education policies. 

I propose a technique for bounding the magnitude of fertility responses to changes in the cost of children, i.e., fertility elasticity, for any country and year. The range is consistent with empirical estimates and is more precise than current meta-analyses. 

Nearly 40% of births in the United States are unintended, and this phenomenon is disproportionately common among Black Americans and women with lower education. Given that being born to unprepared parents significantly affects children’s outcomes, could family planning access affect intergenerational persistence of economic status? We extend the standard Becker–Tomes model by incorporating an endogenous family planning choice. When the model is calibrated to match observed patterns of unintended fertility, we find that intergenerational mobility is significantly lower than that in the standard model. In a policy counterfactual where states improve access to family planning services for the poor, intergenerational mobility improves by 0.3 standard deviations on average. When we calibrate the model to match unintended birth rates by race, we find that differences in family planning access alone can account for 20% of the racial gap in upward mobility. Helping women fulfill their goals about family planning and childbearing can improve social mobility and address racial inequality. 

We combine GPS data on changes in average distance travelled by individuals at the county level with Covid-19 case data and other demographic information to estimate how individual mobility is affected by local disease prevalence and restriction orders to stay at home. We find that a rise of local infection rate from 0% to 0.003%4 is associated with a reduction in mobility by 2.31%. An official stay-at-home restriction order corresponds to reducing mobility by 7.87%. Counties with larger shares of population over age 65, lower share of votes for the Republican Party in the 2016 presidential election, and higher population density are more responsive to disease prevalence and restriction orders.