Location or Hukou: What Most Limits Fertility of Urban Women in China?

Yun Liang and John Gibson

Working Papers in Economics from University of Waikato

Abstract: China’s fertility rate is below replacement level. The government is attempting to increase this rate by relaxing the one-child policy. China faces a possible trade-off since further urbanization is needed to raise incomes but may reduce future fertility. We decompose China’s rural-urban fertility gaps using both de facto and de jure criteria for defining the urban population. The fertility-depressing effects of holding urban hukou are more than three times larger than are effects of urban residence. Since hukou registration is not a fundamental socio-economic constraint, it could be reformed by China’s policy makers in order to weaken the possible trade-off between goals of encouraging urbanization and encouraging higher fertility.

Keywords: fertility; Hukou; urbanization; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 19 pages
Date: 2017-03-25
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna and nep-tra
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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https://repec.its.waikato.ac.nz/wai/econwp/1706.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Location or Hukou: What Most Limits Fertility of Urban Women in China? (2017)
Working Paper: Location or Hukou: What Most Limits Fertility of Urban Women in China?
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wai:econwp:17/06

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