How Does Social Capital Affect Youth Fertility Intentions——Empirical Study in Transitional China
The theoretical implications of social capital can compensate for ignoring the combination individual family factors and socioeconomic structural factors while discussing fertility intentions,providing a new perspective for improving fertility in-tentions.This study provides an in-depth analysis of the general theoretical logic of the influence of individual social capital on youth fertility intentions and proposes a mechanism in the context of transitional China.The empirical tests show that,structur-al and cognitive social capital both have positive and significant effects on the youth fertility intentions,which are heteroge-neous across youth groups.The background of transformation in China forms a specific mechanism of these effects:social capi-tal could enhance youth happiness through psychological release effect and improve youth fertility attitudes through norm-shift effect,further increase fertility intentions.The article expands the research perspective on the impact of social capital on fertili-ty intention,which is conducive to the construction of China's localized fertility theory and can provide new policy insights for addressing China's low fertility problem.
fertility intentionstructural social capitalcognitive social capitaltransitional China