| Fertility rates and fertility desire have far-reaching effects on a country’s demographic structure and even on economic and social development.The explanation for influencing fertility desire has resulted in a large number of studies,such as the perspective of the family economics paradigm,the structuralist paradigm,the social psychology paradigm,the biodemographic paradigm,etc.However,most of these studies present a static research perspective.In recent years,China has gradually relaxed its restrictive policies on fertility,but the fertility desire of the population has not increased but tended to decrease instead year by year.How can this phenomenon be explained? Chinese society has undergone tremendous social changes since the reform and opening up,and has undergone a rapid transition from a traditional society to a modern society.This paper argues that explaining the change in fertility intentions in China should consider how the rapid changes in Chinese society have influenced fertility intentions.Since the reform and opening policy,China’s social structure has been broken,with the traditional “holistic” social structure gradually transforming into a “differentiated” social structure,which is manifested by the increasing degree of social pluralism and heterogeneity,the decreasing degree of social integration,and the increasing social anomie,i.e.,the gradual disintegration of the old social norms while new social norms are yet to be created.On the one hand,marketoriented reforms have brought about rapid economic development,with various social institutions changing,which are the different aspects of social change in the same process.It manifested in the intensification of the division between the rich and the poor,the gradual decline in the level of social capital,and changes in people’s expectations of social mobility.On the other hand,social change brings about a continuous change in people’s values,with the traditional materialistic values gradually changing to post-materialistic values,and the concepts of taking care of the old,leisure values,gender equality,and perception of happiness are all in a dynamic process of change.These two dimensions of social change are bound to have an impact on people’s fertility intentions,with the former constituting an exogenous factor influencing fertility intentions and the latter an endogenous one.This paper examines the influence of these two dimensions on fertility intentions by using quantitative and qualitative research methods.In the quantitative study of this paper,the explanatory variables are the reproductive age group’s fertility quantity preference and fertility gender preference.The independent variables in this paper are social institutional factors and cultural value factors.The variables that portray the social institutional factors include economic development,social trust,expected social mobility,sense of social equity,and social security;the variables that portray the cultural values are the views of happiness,leisure values,views toward caring for the elderly,and gender equality.The findings of this paper can be summarized as follows.First,both social institutional factors and cultural values significantly affect fertility preference.With regard to fertility quantity preferences,in terms of social institutional factors,increased social equity,social trust,and expected social mobility increase fertility preferences respectively,while economic development significantly decreases fertility preferences.In terms of cultural values,increased happiness,the concept of child-responsible for the elderly,and gender equality increase fertility quantity preferences,while the value of leisure decreases fertility quantity preferences.At the same time,social institutional factors and cultural value factors also influence the reproductive age groups’ quantity preference by gender.For example,increased social equity,expected social mobility,and well-being increase the preference for more boys,while economic development and leisure values decrease the preference for having more boys;increased social trust,expected social mobility,and well-being,as well as the notion of having children to care the old,increase the preference for more girls respectively.At the same time,economic development itself is the most important driver of China’s modernization process and is a comprehensive indicator of marketization,and in its relationship with politics,society,and culture,economic development has an impact on other social institutions and cultural values.Accordingly,this paper examines the impact of economic development on fertility intentions by influencing other social institutional factors and cultural values.It is found that economic development reduces fertility intentions by influencing social institutions and cultural values.In addition,the data in this paper find that economic development does not reduce the fertility quantity preference in a linear downward trend,but rather shows a U-shaped effect.The mechanism is that after reach to a certain level of rapid economic development,with the improvement of social support measures,people’s perception of social mobility will rebound and their confidence in the future will gradually increase;at the same time,people’s perception of taking care of the old will also change and start to return to large families,thus will lead to a rebound in fertility intentions.Second,there are heterogeneous differences in fertility preferences.For the preference of the number of children between rural and urban groups,economic development hardly affects the rural group,but significantly reduces the preference for the urban group.In addition,the sense of social equity,happiness,and leisure view also significantly affect the preference for the urban group,but not for the rural group.As for the preference for the number of boys,economic development significantly reduces the preference for urban groups,but has no significant effect on the preference for rural groups.For the preference for the number of girls,economic development significantly reduces the preference for urban groups,but has only a slightly negative effect on the preference for rural groups at the 10% level.The above results suggest that modernization and economic development are more likely to reduce the preference for the number of children and gender preference in urban groups.And it is probably because urban groups are more influenced by modernization and marketization,with higher education levels and advanced values.At the same time,the fertility intention is also affected by the life-cycle effect and the generation effect,with the life-cycle effect exerting a positive effect on fertility intention and the generation effect exerting a negative effect on it overall.Third,social institutional and cultural value factors play different roles in the willingness of childbearing age groups for having one,two,and three children.Social trust,social equity,increased social mobility and well-being,and the view of children should be responsible for the old all contribute to the willingness of having one or two children.But increased social trust and social equity reduce the willingness to have three children.Meanwhile,the social security system does not significantly affect the willingness of the childbearing group to have one or two children,but will significantly reduce their willingness to have three children.The leisure view is not significant for people to have one child,but it significantly reduces their willingness to have two or three children.This suggests that the preferences for the different number of children are influenced by different factors,and thus the country should take different measures to address people’s different preference for the number of children when formulating fertility policies.Fourth,the factors influencing fertility preferences change somewhat over time,with some factors acting steadily and others fluctuating in its influence,showing a decrease or no influence at all.Among the factors influencing fertility preference,social trust,expected social mobility,and the value that adult should be responsible for the old significantly and steadily increase the fertility preference over time,while the value of leisure decreases the fertility preference,and the effect of happiness changes from a significant negative effect to a significant positive effect.In terms of gender quantity preference,the effects of social equity and happiness show a trend of increasing and then decreasing over time on boys’ quantity preference;the effects of social security,leisure view,and gender equality view show a trend of decreasing and then increasing over time on boys’ quantity preference;and the effects of expected social mobility keep decreasing.The effects of social trust,expected social mobility,and the value that adult should be responsible for the old gradually increased over time on the quantity preference of girls;the effects of social equity,happiness,and gender equality perspective showed a decreasing and then increasing trend over time;the effects of leisure perspective gradually decreased over time.In terms of first-child gender preference,whether it is first-child boy preference,first-child girl preference,or “son preference”,the influence of social institutional factors is smaller or insignificant over time,but it is more influenced by cultural value factors,among which,gender equality steadily reduces people’s first-child preference for boys and “son preference”.The leisure value steadily increases the one-child preference for girls,and other value factors fluctuate over time.In addition to the quantitative analysis,this study conducted a small-scale questionnaire and semi-structured interviews with the childbearing age group,and found that two children are still the most preferred number of children,followed by one child,and the effect of the three-child policy on people’s willingness to have children has not yet been fully realized,with the proportion of people unwilling to have children exceeding the proportion willing to have three children;at the same time,people still prefer boys to girls.In terms of the factors influencing fertility intentions,the survey finds that upward social mobility,increased social capital,social equity,and good social security all increase people’s fertility intentions;meanwhile,increased happiness and gender equality increase people’s fertility intentions,while the value of leisure is believed to reduce their fertility intentions.This is similar to the results of quantitative analysis in this paper,i.e.,both social institutional factors and cultural value factors have corresponding impacts on people’s fertility intentions.Finally,based on the empirical research analysis and mechanism explanation,this paper proposes policy recommendations to improve people’s fertility intention,such as cultivating social capital,improving social security,opening up mobility channels,improving inclusive policies,paying attention to gender equality education,and establishing a new pluralistic view of retirement. |
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