Place-based policies, rural employment, and intra-household resources allocation: Evidence from China’s economic zones

Using both reduced-form methods and structural modeling, we identify the relationship between place-based policies and individual bargaining power in rural China. Exposure to economic zones significantly increases women's resource shares and reduces within-household inequality. The results are mainly driven by economic zones with female-dominated industries and women's sectoral reallocation from agricultural to non-agriculture employment. Moreover, we analyze the impact of place-based policies on children's education and find the dropout probability of children decreases by more than 4% when households live near EZs and girls benefit more from women's bargaining power compared with boys.