Effects Of Higher Education Expansion On Women’s Marriage And Birth Time And Fertility Level In China

China’s higher education has been expanding since the resumption of university entrance examination in 1977,which exerts a profound influence on the society’s socioeconomic development,promoting education equity,population migration,economic development and marital and obstetrical changes.Many theries,including marriage market theory and cost-utility theory for fertility,hold the view that developement of higher education leads to fertility decline.On the one hand,higher education leads to birth time delay and fertility decline by influencing first marriage time and marriage rate.On the other hand,it changes female’s fertility attitudes,which then delays birth time and declines fertility rates.So this paper aims to estimate the effects of higher education expansion on female’s marriage and birth time postponement and fertility level decline from the perspective of empirical study.In the process of concrete practice,this paper combined standardized methods and tempo-adjusted TFR methods to research the effects of higher education expansion on marriage and birth time,total fertility rate and completed fertility rate on the basis of the fourth,fifth and sixth census data.The study finally found that:(1)The expansion of higher education has an important impact on the postponement of female marriage and childbearing age,and this effect is both coherent and staged.Coherence is reflected in the continuous delay in the age of marriage and childbearing,and the effect of higher education expansion on the age at second birth is basically caused by the delayed effect on the age at first birth.The stage characteristic is reflected in that the higher education expansion rate in 1990-2000 is slower,and there is almost no effect on the delay of the average first marriage age of women,however,the impacts on birth intervals are relatively large.And the higher education expansion in 2000-2010 is accelerated,which delays the average age of first marriage for women by 0.31 years,but has little effect on birth intervals.(2)Higher education expansion is one of the important reasons for thedecline in female fertility.Between 2000 and 2010,the expansion of higher education reduced TFR by 0.03,with the level effect contributing 0.01 and the tempo effect contributing 0.02.And it reduced average number of children ever born by 0.03 and average number of surviving children by 0.02 for women aged 15 to 50 between 1990 and 2000,(3)Overall,the effects of higher education expansion on female’s marriage and birth time and female’s fertility level are small Its impacts on female’s fertility levels can be devided into direct impacts and indirect impacts.The indirect impacts through postponing marriage and birth time(tempo-effects)are restricted by direct impacts(level effects).Compared to all other factors,higher education expansion has a relatively small level effect and tempo effect on female fertility levels.