The Effect of Employment Differentiation of Rural Couples on Fertility Intentions
As fertility is a joint decision of couples,exploring the changes in fertility intentions and the underlying mechanisms caused by employment differentiation of rural couples may pro-vide a new perspective to solve the problem of low fertility in China.Using data from the China Family Panel Studies(CFPS)for the years 2014 and 2018,this paper empirically investigates the effect of employment differentiation of rural couples on their fertility intentions.The results show that employment differentiation of rural couples reduces their fertility intentions.Compared with farming couples,part-time and non-farming couples have 0.037 and 0.054 fewer fertility intentions on average.The above findings still hold after robustness tests using the CMP model and Tobit model.Employment differentiation had a stronger inhibitory effect on fertility intentions of rural couples under 35 years old and those with a weak village clan atmosphere.Mechanistic tests suggest that weakened parenting ability and weakened traditional fertility attitudes are important reasons for the decline in rural couples'fertility intentions due to employment differ-entiation.Employment differentiation among rural couples also has a significant negative effect on their behavior toward having two and three children.Therefore,inclusive fertility policy reform should focus on both the cost and time concerns of rural couples in raising children,as well as creating a new fertility culture in order to stimulate the fertility motivation and emotional needs of rural couples.
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
维普
