A Study On The Impact Of Basic Public Service Provision On The Birth Rate Of Population

Population is a fundamental element of economic and social development.As China’s population growth slows,the demographic dividend will eventually affect economic growth and size,as well as global competitiveness.2020 data from the seventh census shows that China’s births and birth rate continue to decline,indicating that fertility policies alone are no longer sufficient to reverse the country’s growing demographic problems.Although policies to encourage fertility have been in place for some time,the actual results have been unsatisfactory,with provincial birth rates only rising for a short period,part of a policy dividend period.To fundamentally increase China’s birth rate,local governments need to improve relevant birth support services,reducing the cost of childbirth and parenting education in terms of birth subsidies,maternity insurance,personal tax relief,extended parental leave,provision of childcare services,and housing priority protection.Exploring the impact of basic public service provision on the birth rate of residents is important for the government to make up for the shortcomings of its work,adjust the demographic structure and promote economic development.This paper begins by combing through relevant literature,concepts and basic theories at home and abroad to reveal the mechanism of the impact of basic public service provision on the birth rate of the population.Taking the birth rate of China’s population as the research object,data from 31 provinces,municipalities and autonomous regions from 2003-2019 are therefore selected for analysis.Secondary indicators were selected through six aspects: public education services,medical services,social security and employment services,public cultural services,environmental protection services and infrastructure,and the entropy value method was applied to derive the level of basic public service supply to analyse the current situation and structure of basic public service supply.It is found that in recent years,the overall trend of basic public service supply level has been on the rise,but there are large differences in the regional distribution of supply level,gradually decreasing from the east to the west,but the regional gap has gradually narrowed in recent years.Secondly,the birth rate was selected as the explanatory variable,the basic public service supply index was selected as the explanatory variable,and six factors were selected as control variables to construct a panel model regression,and robustness tests were conducted.The empirical results show that the estimated coefficient of the level of basic public service provision is significantly positive,the estimated coefficient of the level of disposable income per capita is significantly positive,the estimated coefficient of employment is significantly negative,and the rest of the control variables are not significant;and the empirical results are still stable through regression by region.Regressions on the categories of basic public services show that the level of basic education has a significant negative effect on the birth rate,social security and employment services have a significant positive effect on the birth rate,and the level of basic health care has a significant positive effect on the birth rate.By improving the budget constraint,the provision of basic public services improves residents’ perception of well-being and drives up the birth rate.Finally,based on the empirical results and taking into account the actual situation,we propose to improve the multi-level integrated basic public service supply system;improve the maternity protection system;increase the accessibility of basic public services;and improve the childcare services for infants and children.