The Study Of Population Trends In Rural China

In the past 30 years, the population in rural China has experienced a huge shift.The natural growth declines sharply, and China has gone through one of the largest migration in the history of peacetime, leading to the surplus rural population scale shrinked and population aging degree deepened gradually. Rural population change is related to agricultural production, rural organizations, social security and other issues directly. Therefore, understanding and predicting the trends of the rural population clearly and accurately, will be vitally significant to related areas of research and policymaking.Fertility rate is one of the crucial factors that affect the natural change of population, the completed fertility rate (CFR) and the total fertility rate (TFR) are two main measures of lifetime fertility level, which are the important contents in the study of population. Although CFR is used for responsing to the real birth level, but only can reflect the women who have completed the whole childbearing period (15～49), it is a lack of timeliness to guide the reality and predict the future. Abstractly,CFR and the mean childbearing age at first birth(MAC1)are likely to be highly relevant with each other.Estimating method based on MAC1 is advantageous to shorting the time-lag,owing to the first-time behaviors will be ended earlier than the whole childbearing period finished.Migration rate is another major factor that impact mechanical change of population,the non-farm employment transfer of rural labor force is an important part of migrant population.Generally believed,age has a significantly negative effect on the probability of rural labor transfer,and it implicitly assumed that ones who have borned at different years have the same transfer mode(the age distribution form of transfer probabilities).It is clearly that,this assumption can not be hold for China has experienced the socio-economic and culture changing constantly.Irrespective of the different transfer modes to predict the future,it will produce greater biases. Based on the discussion and application of the estimation methods of fertility level and migration level,this paper tries to analyze further and forecast the trends of population in rural China.The main contents and conclusions are as following:Part 1.The estimating method of CFR based on MAC1.The goal of this section is to confirm the feasibility and rationality of the estimating method of CFR based on MAC1,and macrostatistics of fertility will be used to verify the assumption.The results show that CFR and MAC1 have high-negative correlation,and the estimates are stable and accurate.Compared to the estimating method based on TFR statistics,it provides better estimates.The birth rate estimates calculated by CFR deviate smaller with the actual number.As a result,using MAC1 to estimate CFR is a feasible method which can provide more accurate estimation results.Part 2.The analysis and prediction of fertility level of rural population.The goal of this section is to analyze and predict fertility level of rural population.On the basis of the first part,the Part 2 testes and verifies the significant negative relationship between CFR and MAC1 using another data source,which has surveyed the whole rural population of each sample village in Jiangsu,Anhui,Henan,Hunan and Sichuan province in 2010,and Jilin province in 2013.And in addition,it finds out the relationship between CFR and MAC1 is influenced by other factors.The conclusion is that the woman who is better educated and the one who and whose husband has have non-farm work experiences before first childbearing will be inclined to have higher childbearing age at first birth and less children at the same time.However,the "one-child" policy makes the negative correlation between MAC1 and CFR lower.The prediction results show that,without considering the influence of "two-child" policy,CFR will continue to decline in the future.Part 3.The age-specific differences of probilities of rural labor transfer,and the prediction of the transfer amount in the future.The aim of this part is to perfect the labor transfer decision model,and predict the future transfer amount.Using rural population survey data sampling entire village from six provinces,this paper analyzes the influence on the transfer decision-making mechanism of rural labor force empirically,and emphasizes on the age-specific differences of probilities of labor transfer.The results show that it is inverted u-shaped relationship between age and the probability of labor transfer.The one bomed later then he/she may get a higher transfer probability,and the inverted u-shaped relationship is more significant.Other individual characteristic variables also have the significant effect on the probability of labor transfer.From the aspects of the demand in labor market,economic growth has a significant role in promoting the transfer amount,while the development of manufacturing,construction and service industry is more important to the labors of 16-30,31-45 and 46-60 years old respectively.As predicted,the labor transfer amount will reduce gradually in the future,and ignoring the age-specific differences of probilities of labor transfer,the prediction results will be on the high side.Part 4.On the analysis of the rural population quantity and structure change and prediction.Based on the prediction results of Part 2,this section tries to simulate and predict the population quantity and structure of birth in the future by setting three kinds of target fertility levels under the background of childbearing policy relaxed,and combined with the migration levels,using age-moving method,we analyze and predict the rural population trends.It is concluded that,the rural surplus population scale will continue to shrink even in high fertility scheme,and the degree of the aging of the population will be more serious.The surplus population will be reduced to half the level of the initial condition,and the proportion of population over 60 years old will be more than 30%,and the average age will reach almost 44 years old by 2025.According to the basic tendency of rural population forecasted in this paper,it recommends that government should institute a diversified pro-natalist policy to boost fertility roundly and gradually,dig the demographic dividend further and strengthen the construction of social security system in rural areas especially the old-age security.