An Analysis Of The Factors Affecting The Decline Of China 's Fertility

After nearly three decades of family planning policy, China’s total population has been effectively controlled. At the same time, the total fertility rate of China’s population is declining, and continuing below normal replacement level. It is no doubt that family planning policy played an important role in the declining of China’s fertility, while the socio-economic factors also played an important role in the process of fertility decline in China. However, which factor played a more important role in the declining of China’s fertility can’t be reached in an agreement in the majority of scholars. The first reason is that it is difficult to distinguish the impact on fertility between these two factors, Secondly, the effect of these two factors may vary in different areas and different levels of economic development. In order to figure out which factor played a greater impact on China’s fertility, we must adopt new research methods. Basis on the existing studies, this article tries to make clear of this problem through new research methods.In this study, we analyse this problem whether policy factors or socio-economic factors played a more important role on Chinese fertility from two aspects. In the first part, we make a conclusion by comparing the difference between policy fertility and actual fertility in different provinces. If the policy fertility is higher than actual fertility, policy factors played a more important role on Chinese fertility. In the second part, we compare China with other countries that do not carry out family planning policy, we compare the different effect socio-economic factors played on fertility. If the effect between China and other countries are the same, socio-economic factors played a major effect on the decline of China’s fertility.From the study, we can arrive at the following conclusions:(1) We know that whether family planning policy or socio-economic factors played a more important role on the declining of China’s total fertility rate not only depend on different regions but also depend on the level of socio-economic development. So the family planning policy would produce the different results on the fertility rate in different regions and in different level of socio-economic development, that is, whether the family planning policy or socio-economic factors played a more important role on the declining of China’s total fertility rate is different.(2) Through comparing China with other countries that do not carry out family planning policy, we can conclude that the decline in fertility rates in China as well as other developed countries are determined by the socio-economic factors, policy factors only accelerate or retard this change.