E2026014                                        2026-06-07

Rufei Guo  Junjian Yi  Junsen Zhang

Abstract

China’s transition from high fertility to ultra-low fertility is one of the most consequential demographic transformations in modern history. This paper reviews the evolution of China’s fertility policies from the “Later, Longer, Fewer” campaign of the 1970s, through the One-Child Policy era, to the recent shift toward pronatalist policies. We emphasize the political economy of policy formation, documenting how demographic pressures ,bureaucratic incentives, and the interactions between Chinese demographers and policymakers shaped major policy changes. We then synthesize the economics literature on the consequences of these policy regimes for fertility behavior, household investment, gender inequality, marriage markets, savings, migration, and intergenerational mobility. The review highlights three broad lessons. First, China’s fertility decline began before the One-Child Policy and was strongly shaped by earlier state-led birth-control efforts. Second, fertility policies produced far-reaching and often unintended socioeconomic consequences, extending well beyond population size. Third, the recent failure of policy relaxation to reverse declining births suggests that China’s low fertility is now driven less by formal birth quotas than by low fertility desires, high child-rearing costs, gender-unequal norms ,and persistent one-child family norms. Effective pronatalist policy therefore requires not only financial incentives, but also a deeper understanding of the social, economic, and institutional forces shaping fertility decisions.

Key words: Fertility Transition, Birth Control, One-Child Policy, Pro-natalist Shift

讨论稿全文下载