Abstract
The tremendous reduction in fertility rates combined with baby boomers entering the labor force has resulted in a demographic “dividend” in China since the 1980s, which features a low child dependency ratio, still not-yet high elderly dependency ratio, and a rich labor force supply. Although high social and political costs were paid, the demographic dividend contributed significantly to China’s economic boom in the past 20 years. However, this dividend will disappear in a couple of decades (Cai 2006; Wang and Mason 2006), producing many questions about China’s future. What will the social and economic consequences be if China continues to implement its current strict fertility control policy? Is it necessary to change the current fertility policy? If so, what are the optimistic and feasible options? This chapter addresses these important questions with an application of the ProFamy extended cohort-component method. The unique features of this study include a comparative analysis of possible options for fertility policy transition based on demographic projections of population aging, households and elderly living arrangements, dependency ratios, pension deficits, labor force supply, the marriage squeeze, and economic costs under different fertility policy scenarios.
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Notes
- 1.
For example, in a national family planning policy/management meeting held in early 2005, the Vice Prime Minister asked the director generals of all 31 provincial committees of population and family planning whether they would agree if the current fertility policy were relaxed. All of the director generals except the one from Shanghai said “no”.
- 2.
Our estimate of the TFR as 1.63 in 2010 in China implies an under-reporting rate of new births of about 25 %. Note that the average under-reporting rate of about 9.5 % in 2000 mentioned above was an average for ages 0–9. However, the underreporting rate of new births is much higher than other childhood ages, especially ages 6–9, when most of the under-reported children were registered for school.
- 3.
Our rural and urban TFR estimates in 2010 were slightly higher than those estimated for 2000 shown in Table 12.1, because various provinces in China had started to allow couples with both parties who are an only-child (i.e., no siblings) to have two children.
- 4.
Data obtained from Ministry of Civil Affairs, see Zeng (2002).
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Zeng, Y., Land, K.C., Gu, D., Wang, Z. (2014). Application of Household and Living Arrangement Projections to Policy Analysis in China. In: Household and Living Arrangement Projections. The Springer Series on Demographic Methods and Population Analysis, vol 36. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8906-9_14
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