The One Child Policy and Promotion of Mayors in China

Juan Carlos Suárez Serrato, Xiao Yu Wang, Shuang Zhang

NBER Working Paper No. 21963
Issued in February 2016
NBER Program(s):   DEV   LS   PE   POL 

We study the implementation of the One Child Policy to test whether the promotions of mayors were meritocratic. We model the incentive design of provincial governments that evaluate mayors using self-reported performance. We relate the desire to maximize output while promoting high-ability mayors to equilibrium incentives, and derive testable predictions. Our empirical comparative statics are consistent with meritocracy. We then evaluate the screening efficacy and test for misreporting using retrospective birth rates. We find that, while promotions were meritocratic, misreporting sapped the effectiveness of the meritocracy, contradicting the belief that meritocratic promotions enabled China’s development despite lacking democratic accountability.