Social Welfare System as the Cornerstone of Social Mobility and Fertility Desire
Since the total fertility rate of China,defined as the number of births per woman,fallen below the replacement level of 2.1 in the early 1990s,it has gradually dropped to a low of 1.2 in 2021,one of the lowest in the world.Consequently,China has entered a new phase of demographic transition characterized by negative population growth and becoming an aged society.The determination and dynamics of fertility have been widely recognized as a key issue concerned by both academic and policy researchers in China.Likewise,weak fertility desire and low fertility are widespread phenomena in high-income and middle-income countries,and concern scholars in multiple disciplines of social sciences worldwide.Related disciplines have developed some theories and accumulated massive empirical evidence about how fertility and its dynamics are determined.Among those theoretical and empirical works,children's utility hypothesis in economics and demographic transition theory in demography have provided mainstream explanations.While both the theories and empirics resulting from testing these hypotheses do have more advantageous explaining power on why high fertility tends to decline as countries'income level grows,they are inept at answering questions such as whether or not countries with very low fertility can resume their fertility to near the replacement level.This paper explores the rationales,potentials,and ways for countries with very low fertility to resume a position with a more sustainable fertility level or near the replacement level.The paper follows three logically sequent steps as research unfolds.Firstly,it is intended to review the studies related to fertility by breaking the disciplinary boundaries among demography,economics,and sociology,in the hope that the existing theoretical reasoning and empirical evidence can be incorporated into a unified analytical framework on fertility.Secondly,it tries to synthesize the factors commonly revealed,which are believed to weaken fertility desire and lower fertility rate,to a more analyzable conceptual framework-social mobility.Thirdly,it tries to establish a new paradigm on the relationship between population and development,which can hopefully help find effective ways to increase fertility.If there is a fertility that is both sustainable for society and desirable for family,that is,a universal fertility rate equivalent to replacement level,policies aiming to increase fertility can be effective through creating an environment in which families tend to have two children and a country's fertility tends to rise to the replacement level of 2.1.By retracing the world history of economic development and academic thoughts and analyzing the equilibrium conditions under which families realize their maximum utility,this paper confirms those assumptions,though as in any case of a new scholarly conceptualization emerges,the existence of universal fertility and related trend of fertility regressing to it remains hypothetical and subject to be further tested.The main conclusions and policy implications for China can be summarized as follows.Firstly,since there are both universal fertility and trends of fertility converging to it,to encourage fertility desire and enhance the fertility rate,policy efforts should be made to create conditions for fertility to regress to the universal level.Secondly,in China's case,as the significantly wide income gaps among population groups reveal,social immobility serves as critical constraints that prevent rural and urban families from meeting their fertility will.Thirdly,a social welfare system that covers all people and their entire life span is an institutional cornerstone of social mobility.In conclusion,building a well-functioning welfare state in accordance with China's stage of economic and social development is a panacea for promoting social mobility and thus enhancing fertility.
Universal FertilityRegression to the MeanSocial MobilityWelfare State
万方数据
维普
