Analysis About Formation Reasons Of The Present Situation Of Chinese Surname Population From Cliometrics Perspective

China has five thousand years of cultural heritage, Chinese culture can be described as extensive and profound. And the essence of Chinese culture should be the unique Chinese surname culture undoubtedly. China has a large number of population, the number of surnames is also very large, but common surnames are relatively rare and concentrated,87% of the country’s population is covered by only 100 surnames, and 99% of the population is covered by only 500 surnames. How can these surnames walk through the long river of history and maintain such vitality, propagate down from generation to generation? This paper exactly wants to explore this problem.There are a lot of articles studying about Chinese surnames, but quantitative analysis of the reason of the strong procreation of certain surnames is not available yet. In this paper, the author innovatively uses some econometrics methods to quantitatively analyze the surnames which ranked the former 500 in 2012 Chinese Han population, and finally finds out several main causes of the present situation of the Chinese surname population. Following are the specific practices:First, through theoretical analysis, we identify several factors that may affect the present situation of the surname population, and then establish the database based on these factors, then we use the econometrics methods (multiple regression method and propensity score matching method are used herein) to explore the influence of these factors on the surname population, and finally obtain the empirical results.The empirical results show that, overall, the length of surname history, whether surname had served as regime’s surname and the time the regime lasted, the complexity of surname all had very significant impacts on the formation of the present situation of surname population, but they influenced the surname population in different ways. The length of surname history, whether surname had served as regime’s surname and the time the regime lasted affected the fertility rate of this surname, then affected the surname population; whether surname had served as regime’s surname and the time the regime lasted affected the adoption rate of this surname, thus affecting the surname population, however, while controlling the positive impact of regime’s surname on surname population, being the regime’s surname was in a certain risk, it was possible to reduce the population of this surname; surname complexity also affected the surname adoption rate, thus affecting the surname population. The empirical results of the propensity score matching further amends the strength of the impact of being regime’s surname on surname population. It is because of or had a long history, or had served as a regime’s surname, or had lower complexity, making Zhang, Wang, Li, Liu and other surnames became today’s most common surnames in China. They have maintain a strong vitality, propagate down from generation to generation.In this paper, the author innovatively analyze the reason of the formation of the present situation of surname population quantitatively, this is a successful application of econometrics in terms of history. It not only provides new ideas for studies in surname population, but also expands the application fields of econometrics, with high pioneering and practical.