Language And Family:A Study On The Impact Of Language Proficiency On Marriage And Fertility Behaviors

Marriage,fertility,and parenting are essential to family life.As an important events in the growth of an individual’s life,marriage and childbirth are not only related to the happiness and harmony of the individual family but also involve the reproduction and development of the entire social population.It is related to the changes in the country’s future population structure and the direction of the demographic dividend and is even closely related to socioeconomic development at the macro level.Therefore,the impact of marriage and fertility behavior and intergenerational language transmission is not limited to individuals and families but also affects society’s harmonious,stable,and healthy development.With the influence of social changes such as reform and opening up,modernization,and urbanization,the family life of Chinese residents has also changed accordingly.The comprehensive popularization of Mandarin has played an essential role in this process,effectively reducing the language barriers in various places and promoting people’s language exchanges and mobility.In this context,individual family life’s formation and evolution path has also undergone significant changes.The impact of human capital cannot be ignored,especially in terms of marriage,fertility,and intergenerational transmission.However,for a long time,few studies have explored the impact of language proficiency,one of the critical elements of human capital,on family life,resulting in existing research failing to fully identify its deep microcosmic mechanism and behavioral rules.Accurately explaining and grasping the mechanism of people’s marriage and fertility behavior has great practical significance and far-reaching significance for accelerating the construction of marriage and fertility-friendly society,promoting the long-term healthy and balanced development of our population,and providing a solid foundation and inexhaustible driving force for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.Therefore,it is necessary to deeply explore the impact of language proficiency on family life to provide us with new perspectives and methods for an in-depth understanding of the formation and evolution of individual family life.China has a vast territory,many ethnic groups,and rich languages and cultures.With the widespread popularization of Mandarin and the promotion of national economic development and cross-regional mobility of individuals,the individual’s language proficiency is no longer a simple communication tool but has the attribute of human capital.Having language proficiency can help individuals better obtain economic and social benefits—non-economic advantages.In 2000,the "Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language" was promulgated,officially establishing Mandarin as the national standard language.As of 2022,the national Mandarin penetration rate will exceed 80%.However,everyone’s Mandarin proficiency differs,and regional dialects or accents often have distinct local and ethnic colors.As a language of identity and status symbols,they also affect an individual’s social network resources and social integration.So,will language proficiency impact the marriage and fertility market?First of all,the popularization of Mandarin helps to eliminate communication barriers between different ethnic groups and regions in China and promotes population mobility,thereby expanding an individual’s geographical intermarriage circle and affecting an individual’s marriage-matching behavior.In addition,for the floating population,mastering the regional dialects will effectively affect their social integration behaviors,such as intermarriage with locals and settlement willingness.Second,language proficiency usually brings human capital endowment effects to individuals.Especially for females,this effect may increase the opportunity cost of their fertility,affecting the individual’s willingness to bear children.Third,Mandarin proficiency will likely have the same intergenerational transmission effect as other capital,such as education and wealth.At this time,as an explicit or implicit plan and activity on language use among members of the "family domain," family language planning is an essential issue in family language policy and planning research.Based on this,this study attempts to regard language proficiency as an essential human capital and conducts an in-depth exploration of the critical and exciting issue of the impact of individual language proficiency on family life.Language and economics theory,optimal marriage matching theory,gender division of labor within the household theory,and Quantityquality trade-off theory are the theoretical foundations of this study.Using various domestic large-scale micro-survey data,we conduct an economic analysis of the relationship between Chinese residents’ language proficiency and family life from the three dimensions of marriage,fertility,and intergenerational transmission and explore the mechanism.The full text consists of six parts,and the specific contents are as follows.The first part is the introduction,which expounds on the research background,significance,ideas,framework,and possible main innovations of this study.The second part is the theoretical basis and literature review,which defines the core concepts of this study and sorts out the theoretical basis related to this study.We reviewed the relevant domestic and foreign literature on language proficiency and marital behavior,fertility intention,and intergenerational transmission and conducted a literature review to lay the foundation for the theoretical framework of this study.The third part explores the impact of language proficiency on marital behavior.We propose that individual Mandarin proficiency will impact their geographical intermarriage circle,and regional dialect proficiency will impact the migrants’ marriage matching and settlement intention.The fourth part examines the impact of language proficiency on a female’s fertility intention,empirically tests the negative impact of Mandarin ability on a female’s fertility intention,and conducts a mechanism study.The fifth part explores the intergenerational transmission effect of language proficiency and empirically examines the intergenerational transmission effect of Mandarin proficiency.The sixth part summarizes the main conclusions and findings and makes targeted policy recommendations based on the findings of this study.At the same time,we point out our study’s research limitations and future improvements.After the above analysis,the main findings of this study are as follows.First,the study’s results on the impact of Mandarin proficiency on residents’ geographical intermarriage circles show that improving residents’ Mandarin proficiency has significantly expanded the geographical intermarriage circle.The research conclusion is still robust after instrumental variable analysis and robustness testing.The results of the mechanism analysis show that communication effect,marriage search scope,and household registration status conversion play a mediating role in the influence of residents’ Mandarin proficiency on geographical intermarriage circles.The heterogeneity analysis finds that the influence of Mandarin proficiency on geographical intermarriage circles of different populations is different.Specifically,the positive effect of Mandarin proficiency on the geographic intermarriage circle of the agricultural population is lower than that of the non-agricultural population,and Mandarin proficiency has a higher impact on the individual’s geographic intermarriage circle in urban areas.Second,the research results on the influence of regional dialect proficiency on the marriage matching of migrants show that inflowing dialect proficiency can significantly increase the possibility of intermarriage between migrants and local people.In addition,there are differences in the influence of the dialect proficiency of migrants on marriage matching among different groups.The influence of dialect proficiency on the marriage market in rural areas is more significant than that in urban areas,and the influence of dialect proficiency on marriage in non-Mandarin areas is more substantial than in Mandarin areas.Further research finds that dialect proficiency and marriage matching of the migrants also positively impact their willingness to settle down in the future,and marriage matching plays a mediating role between dialect proficiency and settlement intention.Third,the research results on the impact of Mandarin proficiency on females’ fertility intentions show that Mandarin proficiency has a significant negative impact on their fertility intentions.Mechanism analysis results show that Mandarin proficiency will reduce females’willingness to bear children by increasing female opportunity costs,delaying females’ first marriage age,and changing the gender division of labor within the family.Compared with younger groups,the negative impact of Mandarin proficiency on females over 40 years old is more significant,and the effect of Mandarin proficiency on the fertility intention of females with higher education is smaller than that of females without higher education.Fourth,the intergenerational transmission of Mandarin proficiency results shows that improving parents’ Mandarin proficiency can effectively promote the improvement of offspring’s Mandarin proficiency.The results of the mechanism analysis show that the formation and development of children’s Mandarin proficiency are significantly related to parents’ education methods,family language planning,parents’ investment in children’s human capital,and children’s cognitive ability.Parents with high Mandarin proficiency are more likely to use Mandarin in family language planning.Further research finds that the intergenerational transmission of Mandarin proficiency is heterogeneous in different groups.First,the intergenerational transmission of parental Mandarin proficiency decreases as the age of the children increases,and the number of children increases,but there is no significant difference due to the gender of the caregiver.Second,the influence of parents’ Mandarin proficiency is higher for children who communicate mainly in Mandarin at school and those who live in urban areas or eastern regions.At the same time,we find that the family’s external language environment and the parents’ language proficiency have a complementary effect,jointly promoting the improvement of children’s Mandarin proficiency.When the external language environment is consistent with the language choice of the family,the better the language environment of the residence,the greater the intergenerational transmission effect of parents’language proficiency.Based on these findings,this study makes the following policy recommendations.First of all,because of the impact of Mandarin proficiency on Chinese residents’geographical intermarriage circle,this study suggests that the government should insist on consolidating the educational status of Mandarin as a comprehensive popularization,implement publicity and promotion,and strengthen the individual’s competitive advantage in Mandarin proficiency in the marriage market.It is also necessary to improve public transportation services and internet construction,ensure communication,and promote people in different regions to strengthen interpersonal exchanges and enhance communication and connections.At the same time,people are encouraged to work outside their hometown,broaden the scope of marriage search,and realize intermarriage in a larger space.In addition,the government should further improve the social security and employment service system,promote the diversified development of marriage civilization,reduce the differences in socioeconomic status,reduce the negative impact of household registration interests on marriage behavior,and encourage the expansion of the scope of individual marriage partners.Secondly,based on the study of regional dialect proficiency and the marriage matching of the migrants,this study suggests that the government should protect language diversity and give full play to the effectiveness of dialect and Mandarin language resources.At the same time,we must focus on improving Mandarin proficiency in rural areas,reducing dependence on dialects,and promoting Mandarin communication among migrants.Secondly,we must do an excellent job reforming the non-agricultural household registration system to reduce the impact of the household registration interests of the migrants in marriage-matching.The government can further increase support for migrants living and working in other places,improve the stability of life for migrants,promote marriage matching,increase people’s willingness to settle and promote social integration.Then,regarding the influence of Mandarin proficiency on females’ willingness to bear children,this study suggests implementing the following measures to improve females’willingness to bear children.The government can take measures such as female employment guarantees and maternity subsidies to compensate for the loss of human capital stock caused by female fertility and reduce females’ worries about work and income during fertility.The government can also formulate active fertility promotion policies,provide financial subsidies for purchasing marriage houses and female fertility,and provide tax incentives to reduce the pressure on marriage and fertility and help break down fertility barriers.The government,enterprises,and families should work together to reduce the cost of the female gender division of labor,encourage men to participate in the family division of labor,and ease the pressure on female family roles.It is also necessary to advocate the meaning of active fertility,promote positive changes in female fertility intention,and improve female willingness to bear children.Finally,regarding the intergenerational transmission of Mandarin proficiency,this study suggests that the government should continue implementing the combining popularization and improvement policy.In the eastern region,with a relatively good Mandarin foundation,the focus is on improving the quality,while in the central and western regions,where the Mandarin foundation is relatively weak,the focus is on popularization.At the same time,it strengthens the understanding of school language education,promotes the transformation of campus language to Mandarin,gives play to the complementarity of school language education and family language education,and improves students’ Mandarin proficiency.Encourage parents to play a positive role in their children’s Mandarin proficiency by implementing interactive education methods and increasing their children’s human capital investment.In addition,parents should also pay attention to the interactive relationship between family language planning and school language education,help children adjust their language awareness,and improve their children’s preference for Mandarin in language communication.