IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/rpstxx/v78y2024i2p305-324.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How genuine are sub-replacement ideal family sizes in urban China?

Author

Listed:
  • Shuang Chen
  • Stuart Gietel-Basten

Abstract

Ideal family sizes remain at or above two in most low-fertility settings, but sub-replacement fertility ideals have been reported for urban China. The presence of restrictive family planning policies has led to a debate as to whether such ideals are genuine. This study exploits the ending of the one-child policy and the beginning of a universal two-child policy in October 2015 to investigate whether relaxing the restrictions led to an increase in ideal family size. We apply difference-in-differences and individual-level fixed-effect models to longitudinal data from a near-nationwide survey. For married individuals aged 20–39, relaxing the restrictions from one to two children increased the mean ideal family size by around 0.2 and the proportion who desired two or more children by around 19 percentage points. Findings suggest that although reported ideal family sizes have been reduced by policy restrictions, sub-replacement ideal family sizes in urban China appear to be genuine.

Suggested Citation

  • Shuang Chen & Stuart Gietel-Basten, 2024. "How genuine are sub-replacement ideal family sizes in urban China?," Population Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 78(2), pages 305-324, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:rpstxx:v:78:y:2024:i:2:p:305-324
    DOI: 10.1080/00324728.2023.2194670
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00324728.2023.2194670
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00324728.2023.2194670?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:rpstxx:v:78:y:2024:i:2:p:305-324. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/rpst20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.