Low Fertility in China: Trends, Policy and Impact
The paper presents a sketchy discussion of the fertility transition in China with regard to population growth and fertility decline, fertility policy as measured by policy fertility, as well as the impact of low fertility on population aging, gender equality, sex ratio of the newborns and infant deaths, and labor supply, etc. It indicates that rapid population growth is about to be over after dominating China’s population dynamics for several hundred years. China’s fertility has truly fallen below replacement level of 2.1 and China’s fertility transition has entered into the stage of a low fertility. China’s fertility policy encompasses much variation, both geographically and demographically. Nevertheless, the majority of the Chinese population (more than 70 percent) lives in areas with a policy fertility at 1.3 to 2.0 children per couple, and the overall average fertility targeted by the current fertility policies for China as a whole is estimated to be 1.47 at the end of the 1990s, a level that is far below the replacement level. Should the current trend continues, China will become an aging society older than the oldest country in the world today. Population aging is far beyond an issue concerning the elderly support. Rather, it implies an overall transformation of the whole society and calls for an overall reconstruction of social functions and social structures. China becomes the population with the most serious abnormal SRB for a longest period in the world. The over-high sex ratio at birth and the over-low sex ratio among infant deaths can be seen as two sides of the one coin of sexual selection in childbearing. China will soon observe a rapid decline in labor supply in the late 2020s. “Below replacement fertility” has gradually become a global trend in population dynamics and a concern of international society. The understanding of the global trend as well as the implication to the policy response to it is still at the beginning.
