Chinese Grandparenting Culture, Childbearing Age, and Fertility
YU Jingwen, GUO Kaiming, MAI Dongren
International Business School, Beijing Foreign Studies University; Lingnan College, Sun Yat-sen University; Guanghua School of Management, Peking University
Summary:
According to the Seventh National Census, in 2020, the total fertility rate of Chinese women of childbearing age was 1.3, which is lower than the generational replacement level of 2.1. China has entered the era of “low fertility”. Thus, the formulation of supportive policies to unlock fertility potential, meet fertility desires, and enhance fertility rates has become a crucial topic of concern across all societal sectors. A key factor contributing to the low fertility rate is the trade-off that women encounter between their career and childbearing desires. Few studies have examined the role of grandparenting, a common practice among Chinese families, in alleviating this conflict and increasing fertility rates. In addition, the literature on fertility decision-making only discusses how individuals determine the number of children they have, often overlooking the fact that individuals also have to decide their childbearing age, which is another vital dimension of fertility decision-making. This paper presents an endogenous population growth model that encompasses grandparenting, individual occupation and fertility trade-offs. Using data from China Family Panel Studies, this paper examines the impact of grandparenting on family fertility decision-making from both theoretical and empirical aspects. Theoretical analysis shows that grandparenting partially offsets the time constraints faced by young couples when having children, reduces the cost of childbearing time, and advances the initial childbearing age of young people, thereby contributing to an increase in the fertility rate. Empirical results validate the findings of the theoretical analysis. Compared with families without intergenerational support, those with intergenerational support tend to contain younger women who have given birth on average, and these women tend to have more children. The findings remain robust to various robustness checks, addressing concerns related to endogeneity. Moreover, the effects of grandparenting are more pronounced for women engaged in non-agricultural work, those with a high income, and those with a high education level. This study contributes to the literature in the following aspects. First, previous studies have mainly focused on the factors affecting the quantity of children. This study recognizes that childbearing age is an important factor that individuals consider while making fertility decisions. By incorporating female childbearing age into the analytical framework, we examine how grandparenting affects women's childbearing age, offering a novel perspective to existing research. Second, the crucial role of the work-family conflict in women's fertility decision-making has often been overlooked. This paper explicitly incorporates the trade-off between a woman's career and childbearing into the theoretical model and subsequently analyzes the role of grandparenting in alleviating this conflict. The model elucidates the mechanisms through which grandparenting affects childbearing age and the number of children, supplementing the previous literature. Third, this paper empirically validates theoretical propositions based on China's household data and provides direct evidence of how grandparenting affects fertility decisions. Detailed exploration of the heterogeneous effects of grandparenting on fertility and childbearing age enriches our understanding of this topic. This paper has crucial policy implications. First, policymakers should consider the impact of relevant policies on grandparenting when designing measures to improve the fertility rate. Second, addressing the conflict between women's career and childbearing is the key to shaping women's fertility decisions. During the formulation and evaluation of population policies, the role of gender and women's career development should be comprehensively considered to alleviate the work-family conflict, reduce women's childbearing age, and unlock fertility potential. Third, considerable heterogeneity exists in the impact of grandparenting on individuals' fertility decision-making. Therefore, when designing fertility and population policies, the government should adopt different measures for different types of families and adjust those as needed to achieve desired outcomes.
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