The Power of Presence: The Impact of Paternity Leave on Child Health in China
利用跨地区和出生队列差异构建双重差分模型，发现陪产假政策通过促进父亲育儿参与、增加医疗支出和形成合理家庭分工三条路径显著改善儿童健康，且效果因家庭规模和父亲职业类型而异。
Based on multi-source data, this study uses a cross-regional and birth-cohort variation to construct a cross-sectional difference-in-differences model analyzing the impact of paternity leave (PL) policies on children's health outcomes, and explores underlying mechanism. The study finds that PL polices significantly improve children's health, with parallel trends tests and placebo tests demonstrating strong robustness of these findings. Further research reveals that PL can improve children's health through three pathways: encouraging fathers' involvement in childcare, increasing medical expenditure, and forming reasonable family labor division. Meanwhile, the policy shows significant heterogeneous effects on children's health outcomes across different family sizes and father's job types. Finally, this study further explores various factors affecting the implementation of PL, aiming to provide empirical evidence for policy-makers.