Tracking Studies Comparing The Beijing Dongcheng District People Fertility Intention

Upon the data from two surveys which conducted by Beijing Institute of PopulationResearch in2006and2011in Beijing, China, this study examined the change andinfluence factor of fertility desire,and the relationship between fertility desire andfertility behavior in both cross-sectional research perspective and longitudinalresearch respective. The result of cross-sectional study have found that the idealnumber of children increased slightly, but the mean of ideal number was till one, thelevel of second child desire was very low, the gender preference did not exist and thetime of marriage and childbirth is late. The result also found that the significantdifference of ideal number of children between different gender, among differentmarriage and childbearing status, also among income and education level. And theresult of longitudinal study reported that, the main factor which had significantinfluence on the change of ideal number of children was the change of income, lowincome had an inhibited effect of the ideal number of children. The preliminaryconclusions shown that fertility behavior was dominated by one child, the sex ratiowas normal. Respondents had a strong autonomy about their fertility behavior; theythought income is the major factor which will influence their behavior. We found theconsistency about the relationship between fertility desire and fertility behavior, countabout43.8%, the rest is inconsistency, of which about86.8%was the ideal numberwas greater than the real number of children. And the fertility desire was more easilyconverted into fertility behavior when the income increased.At the same time, this paper also made an reflection about the methodology of fertilitydesire study. We suggest that, in the study of factors which affect the change offertility desire and the relationship between fertility desire and fertility behavior, thevalidity of longitudinal research is better than cross-sectional research in somerespects. Tracking study is the necessary complement of the cross-sectional study. Atthe end, we figured out the shortcomings of this paper and put forward the idea offurther study.