The impact of the selective two-child policy on residents’ fertility intentions in China

ABSTRACT

The research uses CGSS, a family survey data, to study the impact of the second phase of the selective two-child policy (STCP II) on residents’ fertility intentions in China. It finds that the policy does improve residents’ two-child fertility intentions, which is more significant in the younger groups. The research results suggest that relaxing the family planning policies does increase the residents’ willingness to have more children in the short term.

KEYWORDS:

• Selective two-child policy
• fertility intentions
• family planning policies
• fertility rate

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• J11
• J13
• J18

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ These data are from China’s National Economic and Social Development Statistical Bulletin 2019.

² STCP I means a couple in which the parents are both an only child will be allowed to have two children. STCP II means a couple in which one parent is an only child will be allowed to have two children. The universal two-child policy means that a couple is allowed to have two children.

³ Http://cnsda.ruc.edu.cn/index.php?r = projects/index&Projects_page = 2.

⁴ It is worth emphasizing that house prices may fluctuate significantly in the short term. According to the China Statistical Yearbook, the average housing prices increased significantly from 2013 to 2015. It can be expected that the increase in the housing prices will reduce fertility intentions (Liu, Xing, and Zhang 2020).

⁵ We need to take other policies into considerations. There may be other important healthcare reforms that affected the residents’ willingness to have two children between 2013 and 2015. During this period, there were some important reforms, such as serious illness insurance, hierarchical diagnosis and treatment, drug price reform, etc., but compared with STCP II, the impact of these reforms on fertility intentions should be very small.

⁶ With the fertility rate continuing to decline in China, the increase of average fertility intentions between 2013 and 2015 is unusual, which means that the simple statistical analysis is likely to underestimate the short-term impact of policy change when the time trend of fertility intentions is not considered.

⁷ The residents willing to have more than three children must be willing to have two children, so it’s reasonable to include the samples of these residents.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Liaoning Planning Fund Project of Philosophy and Social Science [L16CJL002].