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The Consequences of Fertility Decline on Educational Attainment in China

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Abstract

Rapid fertility decline has been witnessed in developing countries during the second half of the twentieth century. However, the consequences of fertility decline on average education and educational inequality at the societal level remain unexplored. Using data from the China General Social Survey (CGSS) and China Family Panel Survey (CFPS) (N = 44,918), this study contributes to the literature by answering two questions regarding the educational consequences of fertility decline in China with simulations. First, has the fertility decline improved human capital via declining average sibship size? Results reveal that the fertility decline during the 1950–1993 cohorts in China brought a 9% improvement in the average years of schooling compared to the Vietnamese counterfactual. Second, how does the differential fertility between groups contribute to educational inequality? Counterfactual simulations show that its impact on the educational disparity between males and females is limited. However, it has a marked impact on the rural–urban disparity in education.

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Data availability

The data used are publicly available and can be accessed through the following approaches. The CGSS data can be accessed at http://cgss.ruc.edu.cn/English/Home.htm. The CFPS data can accessed at http://www.isss.pku.edu.cn/cfps/en/index.htm. The Vietnam Population Census data are provided by the General Statistical Office of Vietnam and accessed through IMPUS International.

Notes

  1. Hukou refers to the household registration system in China under which everyone is assigned a hukou (household registration certificate) at birth. The hukou contains two-fold information. First, the category of one’s hukou status. The hukou status is divided into rural vs. urban or agricultural vs. non-agricultural. Second, the local administrative unit the hukou registered. The hukou must register to only one administrative unit at the lowest available level as one’s official/permanent residential place and under the supervision of all the higher levels of administrative authorities.

  2. When using twin births as an instrument, the effects of sibship size are uncovered by estimating the effect of a twin birth at birth N on the outcomes of children born prior to this birth, conditional on families having at least N births. Since twins and singleton children are different in their birth endowment, like birth weight, and various other aspects that are related to future development, it is not appropriate to use births of twins as an instrument at N = 1, i.e., to compare twins with the single child at first birth, to estimate the effect of an increase in sibship size from 0 to 1. Similarly, the sex composition can only be used for families with at least two children to estimate the effect of the sibship size increase from 2 to more.

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Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to Richard Breen, John Ermisch, Jan O.Jonsson, and Vida Maralani for their valuable comments and suggestions on the earlier draft of this paper. The author also thanks the journal editor and reviewers for constructive comments. The research is supported by the PhD scholarship from the Chinese Scholarship Council.

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This work is supported by Chinese Scholarship Council, 201808060314,Hanzhi Hu.

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Hu, H. The Consequences of Fertility Decline on Educational Attainment in China. Popul Res Policy Rev 42, 94 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-023-09834-7

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