The Relationship Between Second Child Intention And Formal Child Care

As the birth population declines,China’s birth policy has been adjusted.and the establishment of a family-friendly natal support policy has become an important part of the supporting measures of the birth policy.The experiences from OECD countries show that the country which offer formal care to family have higher total fertility rate.Therefore,this paper attempt to find out the relationship between formal care and fertility intentions with China’s data.This paper use China Family Panel Studies data in 2018,using logistic regression model,with second child fertility intentions of the female who have procreated one child as dependent variable to measure how child formal care effect on second child fertility intention.And used propensity score matching methods(PSM)to test the regression result.With logistic regression result,this paper found that attainment of formal child care has a negative impact on fertility intentions,female of childbearing age who attain formal care had a 22.64% lower probability of second child fertility intention than female who did not attain formal care.And propensity score matching methods also support this result.To find out the reason why formal care has negative affect on second child fertility intention,this paper test regional effect and find child formal care has more negative affect on second child fertility intention in east of China.This paper also introduces the price for public kindergarten and kindergarten numbers per thousand children in each province as indicator.Further studies show that kindergarten number per thousand children play positive moderating effect,weakening the role of formal care in reducing the fertility intention.Meanwhile cost of childcare play negative moderating effect on strengthening the role of formal care in reducing the fertility intention.This result depicts that the accessibility and affordability of formal child care play a crucial role on second child intention.At the same time,the child care provided by grandparent would complement the demand of family which doesn’t satisfied by formal child care.For this reason,this paper makes follow suggestions:(1)provide more inclusive formal child care services to increase the coverage of formal child care,(2)Cut the cost of child care services to reduce the burden on child care for family,(3)Improve the quality of child formal care and provide diversified child care services to meet demands of family.