The Research On Fertility Behavior And Subjective Well-being Of People Of Childbearing Age

With the economic and social improvement,the fertility level has changed from high to low.In the early 1990s,China entered a stage of low fertility levels.In 2016,China implemented the two-child policy,but the birth rate did not rebound to a reasonable level,which aroused scholars’ thinking and discussion.The declining fertility rate has brought about many problems such as the aging of the population and declining birthrate.The ”14th Five-Year Plan” will actively respond to the aging of the population to the national strategic level for the first time.The first task is to optimize the fertility policy and promote the long-term balanced development of the population.From the perspective of subjective well-being,this article studies the impact of reproductive behavior on the well-being of people of childbearing age,hoping to provide a new perspective for explaining the decline in fertility.Starting from the status quo of fertility in China,this article introduces the evolution of the fertility policy and the fact that the two-child policy has had little effect.At the same time,the related theories and research status of fertility and well-being are briefly combed to provide a theoretical basis for later research.And then,this paper makes a brief descrip-tive statistics of Chinese residents’ fertility behavior,fertility willingness,fertility concept,and happiness,and builds a measurement model based on this.This article contains two perspectives: the number of births and the fertility willingness-to-behave gap.First,build balanced panel data based on the 2010-2018 China Family Panel Studies(CFPS)data,and use a fixed-effect model to study the impact of the number of births on the well-being of people of childbearing age,and analyze the heterogeneity from the aspects of age,gender and urban-rural.Secondly,using the data of CFPS in 2018,the least square method is used to explore the impact of the fertility willingness-behavior gap on the happiness of people of childbearing age,and to compare the differences between different ages,genders,and urban and rural groups.Secondly,using the cross-sectional data of CFPS in 2018,explore the impact of the fertility desire-to-behave gap on the happiness of people of childbearing age,and compare the differences between different ages,genders,and urban-rural groups.After research,this article draws the following conclusions:(1)From the perspective of the number of births,generally speaking,having chil-dren is happier than having no children,and having two or more children is happier than having only one child.The number of births has a heterogeneous effect on the well-being of people of childbearing age.The post-80s,men and rural residents can get a sense of happiness from the number of children.However,the relationship between the number of births and the happiness of people of childbearing age cannot explain why the fertility rate continues to decline,and the open two-child policy has little effect.Based on the As-piration Level Theory,this article proposes that the key factor affecting the happiness of parents is not the actual number of children born,but the gap between the ideal number of children and the actual number of children,that is,the gap between the willingness to bear children and the childbearing behavior.(2)From the perspective of the fertility desire-to-behave gap,compared with just fulfilling the fertility expectation,fertility willingness higher than or lower than fertil-ity behavior will reduce the happiness of people of childbearing age,but the impact is asymmetry.When the fertility behavior exceeds the willingness,the negative impact on the well-being of the childbearing age group is significantly greater than that of the un-fulfilled willingness.Unlike other age groups,the unfulfilled desire to have children will significantly reduce the happiness of the post-80s generation,and has no significant effect on the post-70s and post-90s generations.From the perspective of gender heterogeneity,the unfulfilled willingness to bear children has a significant negative effect on men’s happiness,but has no significant effect on women.Reproductive behavior exceeding will-ingness has a greater negative impact on women’s happiness than men,which confirms the existence of ”fertility punishment” from the perspective of happiness.Looking at the difference between urban and rural areas,failure to realize the willingness to have children will significantly reduce the happiness of the rural population of childbearing age,but has no significant impact on urban residents.When the fertility behavior exceeds the willing-ness,the negative impact of the happiness of the urban population of childbearing age is greater than that of the rural residents.In other words,urban populations of childbearing age do not pursue the number of births as strongly as rural residents.In general,it can be concluded that the reason for the decline in the fertility rate is not that the phenomenon of ”multiple children and more blessings” no longer exists,but because ”unfulfilled will-ingness” does not have a large negative effect on people’s happiness and ”exceeding will-ingness” will significantly reduce happiness.Due to the existence of heterogeneity,more precise policy measures need to be proposed for different groups.On the one hand,this research has enriched the literature on subjective well-being,and on the other hand,it is expected to provide reference opinions for optimizing fertility policies.Based on the above research results,it can be seen that the policy constraints on the number of births are not the key factor leading to the low fertility rate.If three children continue to be opened,the effect is not expected to be significant.Therefore,it is necessary to formulate more active fertility incentive policies,especially for women of childbearing age,to increase reproductive benefits,reduce reproductive costs,encourage the realization of reproductive wishes,and stimulate reproductive potential.