Income Gap and Fertility Intention:Promoting or Suppressing?
Preventing the fertility rate from continuing to go down and promoting the fertility rate to rebound to the replacement level is related to the future supply of labor factors and the long-term development of the economy in China,and it is of great significance to study the impact of the social income gap on fertility intentions against the background of the continuing widening of the income gap.Based on the 2014 and 2018 CFPS data,the article empirically examined the impact of income disparity on fertility intentions using a twoway fixed-effects model.It is found that as the regional income gap widens,the fertility intention of residents decreases,and the results still hold significantly after robustness tests in different ways.Heterogeneity analysis finds that the effect of income disparity on fertility intentions is mainly significant in the groups of low and middle income,low fertility insurance,under 30 years old,and over 40 years old.Mechanism analysis reveals that as the income gap widens,residents' cost of living,housing costs,and education costs increase significantly,which leads to a decline in fertility intentions,while the widening income gap also reduces residents' sense of well-being and thus suppresses fertility intentions.Further analyses show that the urban-rural income gap and the income gap within villages have a more pronounced dampening effect on fertility intentions,and the income gap based on business income and transfer income significantly reduces individual fertility inten-tions.The article argues that reducing the social income gap,lowering the social cost of child-bearing and raising children,and improving residents'sense of well-being are of great practical significance in unleashing the potential of the fertility policy.
Income GapFertility IntentionCFPSEconomic CostHappiness
万方数据
维普
