When China ended its birth limits, Chinese immigrants in the U.S. immediately started having more babies too.
March 19, 2026
Original Paper
Homeland Echoes: The Persistent Grip of Origin Culture on Immigrants
SSRN · 6347078
The Takeaway
Even though immigrants in the US are not subject to Chinese law, their fertility rates spiked in sync with China's transition to the Two-Child Policy. This reveals that 'origin culture' and home-country policy signals can dictate the private behavior of migrants more strongly than the actual laws of the country where they live.
From the abstract
Do origin-country policy changes echo in the behavior of immigrants who live under a different legal regime? We study Chinese immigrants in the United States around China's staged relaxations of birth limits between 2011 and 2016, culminating in the universal Two-Child Policy. Using complete U.S. Vital Statistics for 2004-2019 and difference-indifferences models, we compare births to Mainland Chinese mothers with births to immigrants from Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, and we contrast first-gener