| On October 29,2015,the Fifth Plenary Session of the 18 th CPC Central Committee approved the implementation of the "comprehensive two-child" policy.The population fertility rate rose slightly to 12.96‰ in 2016.Subsequently,the fertility rate began to decline,from 12.43‰ in 2017 to 10.94‰ in 2018,with a historical low of 10.48‰ in 2019.According to a survey of the health planning Commission's wish to give birth in 2015,74.5% of Chinese families think that the economic pressure of raising children is too great to have two more children.So,how much economic pressure will the birth of a child bring to the family? To what extent will it affect the overall level of household consumption? Many scholars have tried to use various methods to measure this.Among them,the equivalent measure method is one in which the theoretical system is relatively perfect and widely used.Deaton,the Nobel laureate in economics,defines the equivalence scale as a cost-of-living index that links the cost of living of a family with demographic characteristics(such as a family of three)with the cost of living of a reference family with demographic characteristics(such as a monogamous family)on the premise of unchanged utility and price.As early as 1895,Engel put forward the famous Engel coefficient as an indirect expression of family welfare,which is the initial expression of equivalence scale analysis.Since then,under the constant promotion of many economists,the research on the equivalent scale of child-care costs has gradually developed and expanded.Rothbarth model,Prais-Houthakker model,Barten model,Gorman model and Muellbauer model have been developed to form a relatively perfect theoretical system.This paper summarizes the domestic and foreign theoretical and empirical literature on the impact of child-rearing on family expenditure,and attempts to deeply understand the current situation of China's ultra-low fertility rate from the perspective of economic cost.Based on the 2016 CLDS and CFPS,Engel model and Rothbarth model methods,the equivalent scale measurement is carried out to accurately estimate the equivalent scale level of China's family child-rearing cost.The research results show that compared with families with only two adults and no children,the total expenditure of one-child families will increase by 63.91% to 67.62%,and the total expenditure of two-child families will increase by 139.28% to 149.99%(the children all increase by 69.64% to 75%).The raising of two children does not show "economies of scale",which fully proves that raising children does bring great economic pressure to families.Moreover,the cost of child-rearing in families gradually increases with the growth of children's age.The cost of child-rearing in urban families is generally higher than that in rural families.There is a differentiated expenditure preference based on population characteristics between urban and rural families.In addition,based on the equivalent scale valuation data,this paper simulates the possible impact of the implementation of differentiated parental allowance subsidy by the Chinese government on the family income.By comparing the Gini coefficient before and after the subsidy,it is found that the implementation of parental allowance can effectively alleviate the economic burden of parenting families,reduce the economic cost of parenting,and is conducive to reducing the actual income gap between families.In order to better implement the comprehensive two-child policy and reverse the current low fertility rate,we can consider providing moderately differentiated care subsidies or public services such as childcare and nursing for different families according to the number and age characteristics of children raised by families,so as to reduce the direct cost of raising children by families. |
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