Research On The Influence Of New Rural Social Endowment Insurance On Family Fertility Decision-Making

Since the 21 st century,China’s population growth rate has been maintained at a relatively low level against the background of strict family planning policy constraints and rapid economic and social development.The "comprehensive two-child" policy implemented since 2016 has had a certain effect on pushing up the fertility rate,but it lasted for a relatively short period of time,and the expected strong rebound in fertility rate did not occur.At present,although the policy of comprehensive third child and full liberalization of fertility restrictions are being rolled out,the prospect of a rebound in the fertility rate is still not optimistic.In general,China’s population development is facing the problems of decreasing number of births,delaying the timing of births,and imbalance of sex ratio at birth.This dissertation focuses on rural areas with greater fertility potential and investigates the impact of the new rural social endowment insurance on the fertility decisions of families in rural areas in China.On this basis,based on the results of the theoretical and empirical studies,certain suggestions are provided for reference on the need for China to continuously promote the coverage of social pension insurance in rural areas as well as special support policies for different regions and different groups of people.This dissertation focuses on the core research theme of the impact of new rural social endowment insurance on household fertility decisions,and conducts an in-depth discussion from the perspectives of theoretical models and empirical studies.First,the dissertation constructs a theoretical analysis model from the perspectives of total fertility and sub-children.First,from the perspective of total fertility,this dissertation introduces the variables of whether the family participates in new rural social endowment insurance,the total number of children,the total number of boys,and the fixed and variable government subsidies based on the intergenerational overlap model,and analyzes the effects of family participation in new rural social endowment insurance and government subsidies on the number of children and gender preferences of families.Secondly,from the perspective of splitting childbearing,we analyze the effects of the number of children and gender preference of childbearing by introducing a utility function in the form of an abstract function.Secondly,in terms of empirical research,this dissertation uses data from the China Household Tracking Survey from 2010-2018,sets whether households participate in the new rural social endowment insurance and the intensity of government subsidies as the main explanatory variables,and systematically investigates the effects of household participation in the new rural social endowment insurance and the intensity of government subsidies on the number of births,birth progress and gender preferences of households.On this basis,the dissertation verifies the robustness of the findings by replacing variables,excluding the effect of new rural cooperative medical care,excluding the effect of comprehensive two-child policy,and propensity score matching method.Finally,heterogeneity analysis was conducted from the perspective of sub-regional as well as household income level differences.Theoretical studies find that an increase in government subsidies for household participation in new rural social pension promotes households to have more children,while an increase in household contributions to new rural social pension reduces the probability of households to have children.Specifically,the results of the empirical study show that participation in new rural social pension has significant effects on households’ fertility decisions,mainly in terms of squeezing out the number of births,increasing the age of first birth,lengthening the interval between births and second births,and weakening the preference for boys in fertility intentions.If government subsidies increase,the probability of having a second child will increase,the timing of first birth will be earlier and the gender preference of families in the process of first and second births will be weakened to some extent.The main innovations of this dissertation are as follows: firstly,on the basis of the intergenerational overlapping model,variables such as whether households participate in the new rural social endowment insurance and the amount of fixed and variable government subsidies are introduced,which enriches the research related to the original intergenerational overlapping model.Secondly,we systematically study the impact of family participation in the new rural social insurance on fertility decision,including the model of fertility quantity,progress and gender preference,and analyze the impact of the new rural social insurance on family fertility decision from a more comprehensive perspective.The third is to add a consideration of the impact of government subsidies on households’ fertility decisions.This dissertation offers the following policy insights: First,the government should increase subsidies for residents to participate in the new rural social pension and reduce the financial burden of rural residents to participate in the new rural social pension.Second,the income level of residents in rural areas should be increased.Third,the government should strengthen its support for fertility in rural areas.