Baochang Gu and Yong Cai**

Transcription

1 UN/POP/EGM-FERT/2009/6 17 November 2009 UNITED NATIONS EXPERT GROUP MEETING ON RECENT AND FUTURE TRENDS IN FERTILITY Population Division, United Nations Department of Social and Economic Affairs New York 2-4 December 2009 FERTILITY PROSPECTS IN CHINA* Baochang Gu and Yong Cai** *The views expressed in the paper do not imply the expressions of any opinion on the part of the United Nations Secretariat. **Baochang Gu, Ph.D., Center for Population and Development Studies, Renmin University of China; Yong Cai, Ph.D., Department of Sociology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

2 A. INTRODUCTION 2

3 The most recent revision of World Population Prospects (United Nations 2009) revised China s current level of TFR (for ) to 1.77, from 1.73 of reported in the 2006 Revision. This new number is based on official estimates of total fertility through Official estimates for were also considered. However, this so-called official estimate, presumably provided by the National Population and Family Planning Commission of China (NPFPC, formerly State Family Planning Commission, SFPC), is substantially higher than the estimates provided by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) of China, as well as estimates from independent scholars. There is no need to emphasize the importance of presenting accurate and most up-to-date assessment of China s fertility level, because misguided estimates will not only paint a distorted picture of China s demographic future, but also present a misleading global population prospect. In this paper, we start with a systematic review of fertility trend in China since the 1990s, which has experienced a fundamental decline, with its current level of TFR at about 1.5. We then move on to explain the reasons behind this decline, both from a sociodemographic perspective and from a technical standpoint. We finally conclude the paper by discussing the implications of China s low fertility for China and the world. B. WHAT IS THE CURRENT FERTILITY LEVEL IN CHINA Two decades of research on China s fertility has reached a new consensus that China has experienced a tectonic shift in its fertility regime: not only there were delays in marriage and childbearing, but more important, there were fundamental changes in Chinese family values for Chinese families, their reproductive focus is now more on quality than quantity of children. Almost two decades has passed since China s fertility dipped to a below replacement level; Chinese fertility is now amongst the lowest in the world, with its current level of TFR at about 1.5, after discounting for underreporting. Contrary to a popular perception that China s low fertility is mostly a result of policy depression, the ultra low fertility observed in China reflects a silent revolution in Chinese society: While China s birth planning policy limits families reproductive choices, more and more now voluntarily choose to have only one child even they have the privilege of having more children. The most prominent and the most controversial aspect of China s fertility is its birth planning policy, commonly dubbed as the one-child policy. Launched in 1980 as an emergency measure to control population growth for the sake of economic development, the communist party made the petition to its members to voluntarily limit their family sizes in an open letter on September 25, The petition soon became a compulsive measure that requires the majority of Chinese citizens to limit their fertility to one child per couple. However, the introduction of one-child policy was not the starting point of China s fertility transition or its population control effort (Peng 1992, Scharping 2003). As a part of efforts to emancipate women, the newly founded People s Republic of China set women s legal age at marriage at 18, a great depart from the Chinese tradition that favored for early marriage, and should have a direct impact on fertility. Calls to control China s population growth go at least as far back as early 1950s. In the wake of the Great Leap Forward Famine of , Chinese government started programs to promote contraceptive use and late marriage, especially in urban area. China s population control efforts came into full scale in the 1970s. The later, sparser and fewer campaign in the 1970s was probably the most successful fertility reduction program ever. By encouraging people to marry later, to space out between births, and to have fewer children, the program lowered Chinese fertility more than 50 percent in just one decade, from 5.81 in 1970 to 2.72 in 1978 (Coale 1984; Gu 1996; Peng 1991). 3

4 The introduction of one-child policy met stiff resistance however, especially in the rural area. Facing strong backlash from the public, some compromises were reached by adjustments in policy implementation and by expanding and formalizing exceptions that would allow some couples to have more than one child taking into consideration of local culture and family needs. Fertility policy in China can be thus grouped into two large categories according to couple s various aspects of socioeconomic and demographic characteristics: those who are allowed to have only one child, and those who are allowed to have more than one child. The localization of the fertility policies, particularly at the provincial level made available a variety of articles in the birth control regulations as criteria for exemptions from one-child rule (Gu et al. 2007). In general, policy is more restrictive for urban residents than rule residents, and more restrictive for Han majority than ethnic minorities. The three largest groups who are allowed to have two (or more) children are: 1) those whose first child is a girl in most rural areas except Jiangsu and Sichuan provinces, 2) those who are a member of ethnic minorities, and 3) those who live in small pockets of experimental areas with two-child policy available for rural couples. In an exercise of China s fertility policies in various localities and populations across the country based on the 2000 census, it is resulted that more than 60 percent of all Chinese couples would end up with only one child should they all fully follow the current fertility policies, and the overall average fertility targeted by the government s fertility policy for China as a whole would be at 1.47, which is far below replacement (Gu et al. 2007). The adjustments and compromises in the implementation of China s one-child policy reflect an inherent contradiction in this policy: the policy was deemed politically necessary, but socially unachievable even for the most optimistic. In particular, the policy was introduced at the time when China just started its economic liberalization and began to relax its control over most aspects of social life in the 1980s, thus the policy was a countercurrent for a society with increasingly diversifying needs. Not a surprise, one way to respond to this draconian government control was to hide births and children from government officials, especially when economic and social liberalization provided more opportunities of doing so. That led to the problems in underreporting of births and deteriorations of statistics. Despite that Chinese population and fertility data had been previously hailed for its high quality, when China observed below replacement fertility at the national level for the first time in its National Fertility Survey of 1992, the data quality was seriously questioned: the results were regarded as too low to be true. According to the survey, Chinese fertility experienced almost a free fall around 1990: from 2.24 in 1989, to 2.04 in 1990, to 1.65 in 1991 and 1.52 in The drop from 1990 to 1991 was particularly acute, a reduction of almost 20% in just one year, thus raised suspicions of underreporting (Feeney and Yuan 1994; Zeng 1996). Ever since, the controversy about China s fertility level and the reasons behind its swift drop has been the central topic in the field of Chinese demography. The suspicion of underreporting was grounded on three assumptions. First, previous examples of below replacement fertility were all in developed countries. It is thus difficult to perceive that China s fertility would reach such a low level given its low development level and large agriculture based economy at the time. Second, The low fertility rates reported in the 1992 survey came as a big surprise as Chinese fertility stayed, almost stagnated, at the level above replacement in the entire 1980s, even with the forceful implementation of the one-child policy. The challenging experiences of implementing one-child policy in the 1980s support the first assumption and suggest that Chinese fertility may have reached a level that would be very difficult to lower it further, never to mention to have a 20 percent drop in just one year. Third, an institutional tighten-up in China s birth planning policy implementation not long before the

5 survey was considered to exacerbate the problem of underreporting: the central government intensified its birth control efforts in 1991 by making chief officers at each administrative level and unit directly responsible for meeting birth planning targets in his/her jurisdiction, thus provided strong incentives for local officials to hide/underreport births without official quota. The suspicion was also supported by widespread anecdotal stories, including one survey conducted by the SFPC in two provinces with underreporting rate of percent for the newborns. Although underreporting of births and children was neither a peculiar nor a new problem in Chinese population data, an underreporting of percent was almost never heard of. Should it be true, more than a third of births went undercounted in the survey, and Chinese fertility in was most likely to have been at or slightly below replacement level after adjusting for underreporting (Zeng 1996). In retrospect, accumulation of empirical data and demographic exercises indicate that, while underreporting was indeed a severe problem in the 1992 survey, it s unlikely to be at such high as percent (Zhang and Zhao 2006). For example, the fertility rate for 1992 is 1.57 according the 1997 fertility survey, 1.59 according to the 2001 fertility survey, 1.67 based on the 2000 census (NBS & EWC 2007; Retherford et al. 2007), and 1.68 according to Guo (2004) based on the 2000 census. In other words, the low fertility rates observed in the 1992 survey, while it was suppressed by underreporting, did reflect a real decline in Chinese fertility: Chinese fertility dropped to a below replacement level in the early 1990s. The decline trend continued in the 1990s and 2000 onward. Figure 1 depicts the fertility (TFR) trend for China from 1950 to Two government agencies in China, NPFPC and NBS, provide official fertility estimates. We include three lines of fertility estimates for the years of in Figure 1: the unadjusted observations, NPFPC s adjusted estimates and NBS s adjusted estimates. We choose 1991 because observed fertility prior to that year was generally regarded as reliable. We also include a TFR at 2.1, the commonly cited replacement fertility line as reference. NPFPC provides period TFR estimates based on its own assessment of fertility surveys and other sources. Although NBS does not provide direct estimates of TFR, it publishes crude birth rate (CBR) and age patterns of fertility (ASFR) based on censuses and annual population surveys in its annual publications of China Statistical Yearbook and China Population Statistical Yearbook. With information on CBR and ASFR and population age structure, simple demographic exercise will provide corresponding TFRs (Goodkind 2008). In respond to underreporting in their data, both NPFPC s TFRs and NBS s CBR are adjusted, but no information on assumption or procedure of the adjustments is provided. [Figure 1 about here] Figure 1 shows that Chinese fertility decline comes in two distinctive stages. The first wave started not long after the recovery of the Great Leap Forward Famine of China s fertility experienced a sustained rapid decline in the 1970s. The decline stopped around 1980, as TFR rebounded and then fluctuated around 2.5 in the 1980s. The second stage of decline started in the late 1980s, began with another speedy decline and continued at a slower but steady pace. It is clear from Figure 1 that, even after accounting for underreporting, China s fertility has declined to a level that is well below replacement. The adjustments made by NPFPC and NBS do not change the overall trend of a declining fertility in China, especially when we look from a historical perspective. NPFPC s adjustment implies average annual underestimate rate of 25% between 1991 and 2006, with a low of 15% and a high of 41%. NPFPC s adjustment also sets Chinese fertility rate 5

6 virtually unchanged from 1998 to 2006 with TFR around NBS s adjustments show a slow, but steady fertility decline since 1991, with TFR gradually declines from about 2.0 in 1991 to slightly below 1.6 in 2006, implies an average annual underestimate rate of 20%, with a low of 11% and a high of 39%. However, there are compelling evidences suggesting that Chinese government s official adjustments, especially NPFPC s numbers have over-estimated the current fertility in China (Goodkind 2008, Guo 2009). In Figure 2, we compiled fertility trend estimates since 1980 from different sources together to demonstrate both declining trend and the current fertility level. Those sources can be classified into two categories. First, unadjusted survey results, including 1988, 1992, 1997, 2001, and 2006 conducted by SPFC/NPFPC, which provides both retrospective and contemporary fertility measures, as well as population censuses/surveys conducted by NBS, which provides only contemporary fertility measures. Second, indirect estimates based on demographic exercises, including estimates by Retherford et al. (2005) using the 1990 and 2000 census, estimates by Guo (2004, 2008) using the 2000 census and 2005 mini-census, and three estimates by Cai (2009), Scharping (2005) and Zhai and Chen (2005) based on school enrollment. Figure 2 shows more consistency than disagreement across different data sources and estimation methods, especially among estimates based on survey data. By any measure, China s fertility experienced a drastic reduction around While underreporting and sample bias are problems to be aware of in Chinese data, there is unmistakable declining trend in Chinese fertility over the last two decades. With accumulation of more empirical evidences and careful scrutiny of data quality, more and more come to the conclusion that China fertility has indeed fall to a level well below replacement even after discounting for underreporting. [Figure 2 about here] As we can see in Figure 2, three school enrollment based estimates are generally higher than other estimates, and estimates based on 2006 Survey display an upward trajectory from 2003 to As Cai s (2009) study demonstrates that caution must be taken when we use school enrollment data to estimate fertility. Not only structural factors such as economic incentives and increasing in migration have led to inflate enrollment numbers, but also a combination of changes in China s education system and population age structure would led to overestimat cohort size if those factors were not appropriated checked. What Cai (2009) estimated is the upper limit for fertility in the 1990s. The upward trajectory seen in the 2006 survey is a result of biased sample, i.e., the survey over-sampled women who were married, lived in rural areas or had a lower level of education. After appropriate adjustment, fertility in 2006 is actually at a TFR level of 1.4 (Guo 2009, Morgan, Guo and Hayford 2009), which is inline with the estimates based on the NBS surveys. The current level of TFR is most likely at around 1.5, which is based on a consensus that has reached in a number of empirical studies for the fertility level in the 1990s and careful evaluation of most recent reporting. Zhang and Zhao (2006) concluded that the fertility probably fell to around 1.6 in the year Retherford et al. (2005) use own-child method and birth history reconstruction method to estimate Chinese fertility and found that fertility for the four years between 1997 and 2000 is Using variable-r method, Cai (2008) estimates that fertility in the 1990s is in the range of Similar conclusion was also reached by Guo (2004), Guo and Chen (2007), Guo (2009), Morgan, Guo and Hayford (2009). While questioning some of assumptions used in Cai, Zhao and Zhang, and Guo s studies, Goodkind (2008) also reached a conclusion that NBS s CBR numbers have over-adjusted the underreporting factor. Nevertheless, while NBS s estimates display a declining trend in China s fertility over the last decade, and it has officially acknowledged that China s fertility reached 1.6 by

7 (NBS 2006), NPFPC has been reluctant to accept the conclusion that fertility has fallen to a level well below replacement, and maintains that fertility level in China is still around 1.8 (NPFPC 2009, Jiang 2006). The current fertility level is close to or even lower than the level implied by the government s fertility policy as discussed previously; the national TFR would be 1.47 if everyone had the maximum number children as stipulated by the birth planning policy. Fertility at or below this level seems to imply a perfect execution of the policy, which contradicts with the common depiction of strong resistance in China s birth planning policy implementation and numerous reports of policy breaches, and with the general impression that Chinese prefer large family, especially considering that China is still a developing country. It then comes to the question how fertility in China can be so low? C. WHY FERTILITY IS SO LOW IN CHINA Although China s fertility decline is closely related to its birth planning policy, the relationship between fertility policy and fertility level is more complicated than often-portrayed in a linear fashion. First, the history of China s one-child policy has shown clear limits of what a restrictive government policy can achieve, even backed with the most forceful bureaucracy under an authoritarian system. The policy failed to bring down fertility to its desired level during its most intensive period of implementation in the 1980s. Second, in addition to the draconian fertility policy, other important social forces that commonly associated with fertility decline also prominently exist in the process of China s fertility transition. In the last three decades, China has experienced the rapid and drastic social changes that would encourage low fertility. Third, China s one child per couple policy is written and implemented based on cohort fertility. The ultra low fertility observed in China is partly an effect of tempo distortion delays in marriage and childbearing, which will lead to period based fertility measures lower than a cohort based ones. While it s undeniable that China s birth planning policy played an important role in its fertility transition, especially the great success of the later, sparser and fewer policy in the 1970s, we should not ignore the contribution from other factors that are commonly associated with fertility reduction, more specifically, socioeconomic development and ideational change. The demographic transition theory predicts fertility decline when socioeconomic development first brings down mortality, especially infant mortality. The social changes commonly associated with development, i.e. structural changes like industrialization and urbanization, institutional changes like weakening of marriage and family, and ideational changes like the rising of materialism and individualism, all induce couples and individuals to plan and limit their family size, with the spread of contraceptive technology facilitating such choices. While the demographic transition theory has been criticized from many different angles, the negative relationship between socioeconomic development and fertility reduction is supported with strong empirical evidence, both at macro and micro levels. So is in the case of China (Poston and Gu 1987, Poston et al. 2009). China has experienced probably one of the most dramatic and rapid socioeconomic transformations over the last three decades, mostly in the direction that would encourage people to limit their fertility: development of market oriented economy that intensifies competition, increase in social mobility and social solidarity, rapid economic growth accompanied with economic uncertainty, opening up to global influence with rise of individualism It is thus reasonable to expect that Chinese fertility would have experienced a substantial decline even without any population control effort. In fact, because the effects of socioeconomic development 7

8 were built on the success of population control in the 1970s, i.e. the fertility level at the end of 1970s were already not too far from replacement, it is thus not a surprise result that China fertility dropped another 35 percent from 2.3 of 1980 to 1.5 today in the last 30 years while its economy has been growing close to double digit annually. As the same process has repeated many times all across the world, as soon as fertility transition gets started, fertility reduction is very difficult to reverse before hitting its bottom. The disruption of China s fertility reduction process in the early 1980s was an accident caused by a combination of the sudden tightening of birth control with the introduction of one-child policy and other social institutional changes at the time, such as changes in marriage law and loosening up of economic control at the beginning of the reform. As soon as the policy expectation and fertility related social institution settled clear, Chinese fertility resumed its decline trend in the late 1980s. The social aspects of continued fertility decline in China are well documented with some revolutionary changes of attitudes and behaviors with in Chinese family system. First, there is a general change of fertility preference. In contrast to traditional view that Chinese prefer large family, partly as a cultural tradition, partly as an economic necessity for an agriculture-based economy and for old age support, Chinese people now puts more emphasis on quality than quantity. Second, people are making rational decision in their reproductive choice in conjunction with self-fulfillment, as well as other personal and family goals. Third, delay of marriage and childbearing creates a tempo distortion in fertility measure that leads period based fertility measure is somewhat lower than a cohort based one. Fourth, modern contraceptives and acceptance of planned-parenthood make fertility control easier to achieve with little or no social stigma attached. Government subsidized contraceptive services, and low social controversy and social stigma associated with abortion reduce both financial and psychological costs in fertility control. Empirical evidence suggests that there were fundamental changes in Chinese fertility desire. Even with a biased sample that included more tradition-oriented women, the 2006 fertility survey reported a nationwide average of ideal family size at 1.73 (NPFPC 2007). In more developed regions, the number is even lower. Jiangsu Fertility Intention and Behavior Study (JFIBS), a survey in 6 selected counties along the east coast of Jiangsu province, one of the most developed areas in China, reported an average ideal family size at 1.44; almost all of the survey respondents (99 percent) reported either one or two as the ideal number of children, with more respondents choosing having one child rather than two (57 percent vs. 42 percent). Moreover, while childbearing is still regarded as an important life course obligation, it has become more as altruistic behavior than an old-age security. In the JFIBS survey, whereas the majority of the respondents still assign a very high value to having children in their lives, with over 90 percent agreeing with the statement that watching children growing up is the greatest happiness in life, and nearly 70 percent agreeing with the statement that those with no children live an empty life, the majority of respondents also disagree with statements such as the purpose of getting married is to have children, people have children because everyone else does so or children s education is a great investment for parents (Zheng et al. forthcoming). The low value of ideal family reflects changes in Chinese family value more than pressure from the one child policy. Some would argue that the low number of ideal family size is really an effect of the birth planning policy: given the rigidness of the policy, expressing a number above the policy allowance is not only hypothetical, but also a dissent from the current policy, thus would be strongly discouraged. However, even among those who are allowed to have two children, fertility desire is just as low as those who are only allowed to have one child. The JFIBS survey reported an average ideal number of children is 1.46 for those who are qualified to have two children under the current policy, with 55 percent choosing one child per family as ideal, 8

9 and 44 percent choosing two (Zheng et al. forthcoming). Similar phenomena are also observed in the areas where a two-child policy is generally implemented since the mid-1980s (Gu and Wang 2009). More concrete evidence on the revolutionary changes in China s fertility regime is in the change of behavior among those who are allowed to have two children. In the same JFIBS survey, among those who were allowed to have two children, only a third said that they would consider having a second one, and only one-tenth took the advantage of the policy exceptions. Among those who went on to have a second, more of them were because special circumstances, such as their second child were often from a second marriage, or because their first child was disabled or has died. When compared to areas under more restrictive policy with similar socioeconomic and cultural background, the areas with two-child rule can be viewed as natural experiments on the effect of birth planning policy on fertility. If the low fertility in China was indeed a depression of the birth planning policy, we would expect to see a higher fertility in areas where policy is less restrictive. In , a series of case studies were conducted in the areas where a two-child policy has been implemented as early as mid-1980s such as Jiuquan Prefecture of Gansu Province, Chengde Prefecture of Hebei Province, Yicheng County of Shanxi Province, and Enshi Prefecture of Hubei Province (Gu and Wang 2009). In all those areas, their fertility levels were similar or even lower than their nearby comparison counterparts but with a 1.5 child policy. In other words, a more relaxed policy not necessarily translates to a higher level of fertility. Moreover, a relaxed birth planning policy is associated with more balanced sex ratios at birth and of children. Why do many young women or couples of China not want to have a second child, even when they were allowed to? Or in other words, what factors would they take into consideration for having another child? Concerns over uncertain future and the cost of having children clearly stand out as the most commonly mentioned reason by the respondents for not wanting to have another child. According to the JFIBS, the most often given answer to the question was one child is enough, followed by raising children cost too much. Of all respondents qualified to have two children according to the local fertility policy, over 70 percent mentioned these as reasons for not wanting to have a second child. Such a concern over the cost of raising children, however, does not mean that the young couples are poor. To the contrary, in this part of China, couples have seen their lives vastly improved in the last two decades, especially in the last ten years, as only one third of all respondents chose poor economic status as reason for not wanting to have another child. Nor it is due to the lack of energy for couples to raise another child. Only one fifth of all respondents chose not enough energy as reasons for not wanting to have another child. While policy was still a real constraining factor for those who are only qualified to have one child, only 41.7 percent mentioned it as a reason. To understand the separate roles of economic constraints, value orientation, and policy restrictions on fertility intention, a more rigorous empirical test was also carried out by multivariate logistic regression (Zheng et al, forthcoming). The results further confirm that economic conditions are indeed the most important factors in considerations for having more children. The results from the JFIBS survey is just a snapshot of drastic social and cultural changes has happened over the last three decades in China, which will certainly continue for the years to come. Surveys and interviews in other areas of China present a very similar picture. The traditional Chinese family system that built on thousands years of agricultural civilization is being quickly eroded by massive scale industrialization, urbanization, and globalization. At the beginning of China s economic reform, China was by and large an agricultural society. Today, merely about half of Chinese population live in rural area and even less work in the agricultural fields. In this process, families face monumental pressure to adapt to a new social environment that is largely unfriendly if not hostile to reproduction, with increased inequality and uncertainty, 9

10 rising demand for human capital, and retrenchment of public support. Marriage and childbearing are among the most important lifetime decisions that require a more careful assessment of risks and costs than ever before, especially when the body of decision making and risk bearing has shifted gradually from family to couple, and even to individual woman. It is in this context where many ordinary Chinese families choose to concentrate their resources in hope to have few but successful next generation. Such an assessment also often leads to delay of marriage and childbearing, and in some cases, even totally missing the opportunity. After a brief interruption due to change in marriage law, marriage age resumed its ascending trend in the late 1980s. Figure 3 displays mean age at the first marriage by sex in China from 1970 to 2000, based on data collected in the 2000 census (long form). As we have discussed earlier, one important component of China s successful family planning campaign in the 1970s was to encourage later marriage, which pushed female s mean age at first marriage from about 20.6 in 1970 to 22.8 in 1979, an increase of more than 2 years. A similar trend is also found in male s mean age at first marriage. This increase trend was reversed by introduction of a new marriage law in 1980 that sets minimum ages for marriage at 22 for males and 20 for females. This led to a downward shift of marriage age in the next few years (Gu and Yang 1991), and was part of the reason for fertility spark in the early 1980s (see Figure 3). Marriage age resumed its increase trend around 1987, at the same time as the fertility in China resumed its declining trend (Zhang and Gu 2007). It is not a coincident that the time of fertility reduction and that of increase in marriage age are almost perfectly synchronized. It is well-know that postponement of childbearing could distort period based fertility measures (Bongaarts and Feeney, 1998, 2000). Guo (2004) found that tempo effects associated with delays of marriage and childbearing have depressed period TFR of China in the 1990s by as much as 0.3 when compared with the expected completed fertility. [Figure 3 about here] Guo (2008) and Morgan et al. (2009) apply Bongaarts s (2001) low-fertility proximate determinants model to separate factors that lead to China s low fertility. Their model suggests, to achieve the intended fertility of 1.7, the observed period fertility would be at 1.5, a factor in the tempo effects caused by delay, as well as other factors that would affect fertility behavior. Several factors deserve special attention. First, because of wide availability and social acceptance of contraception and abortion, the proportion of unwanted fertility is relative low in China. Second, while strong son preference in traditional setting tends to lead a higher fertility the strategy to achieve an ideal composition of children has switched from by having more children to via sex-selective abortion. Third, the infecundity and sub-fecundity estimates used in their model are likely to be conservative. In sum, Guo and Morgan et al. models suggest that China s low fertility is very much like low fertility observed in other countries. It is resulted from a combination of multiple factors, including socioeconomic changes, cultural/ideational shifts, as well as tempo effects because of delays in marriage and childbearing. While the arrival of below replacement fertility in China, and its continued downward shift seemed to have occurred earlier than expected, it should not be viewed as a surprise any more, after two decades of consistent observations, especially in the contexts other revolutionary changes happened in China. D. THE IMPLICATIONS OF CHINA S LOW FERTILITY 10

11 The arrival of low fertility certainly has a tremendous impact on China s society. The foremost and most obvious one is population aging. Along with the fertility decline and the improvement in life expectancy, population aging will naturally come as a demographic consequence. When fertility declines more rapidly, aging will come more rapidly as well. According to the 2000 census reported that China s population aged 60 and above was more than 10 percent and aged 65 and above was more than 7 percent, a definite indication of China has quickly become an aging society. More recent data from the percent national population sample survey reported that China s population aged 60 and above accounts for 11 percent and aged 65 and above, 8 percent. More important than proportion is the number of elderly people, which implies a population aged 60 and above of about 144 million and age 65 and above of about 100 million. Unlike the case in the developed countries however, population aging occurs in China far before the realization of its modernization. (Gu and Peng 1992) Assuming China s fertility stays at a level of TFR at 1.6, which is higher than the current fertility level, by the mid-21st century, more than one third of China s population is likely to be aged 60 and above, a quarter of China s population to be aged 65 and above, with more than 100 million aged 80 and above. This means that every less than 2 young adults will have to support one old person. China will become an aging society even older than the oldest country in the world today. Figures 4 compares population pyramids between 2000 and 2050 for China. It shows that in a few decades, China s population structure will turn from a pyramid to a pillar shape. What challenges a society may face with an aging population structure such as this is still a huge question to be answered. As a far from complete account it can be seen that the childbearing and rearing facilities will likely become superfluous and services for the elderly will be urgently needed, people will have to reduce their consumption for saving in order to pay their own old age medical costs, and labor supply will be beginning to shrink. It is apparent that population aging is far more than an issue of large proportion of elderly; rather it implies an overall transformation of the whole society, and calls for a reconstruction of social functions and social structures. [Figure 4 about here] Support of the elderly is an acute social issue to be addressed, particularly in China s rural areas. Traditionally, rural people tend to rely heavily on their children for elderly support, but with the sharp reduction in number of children, the practice is becoming no longer feasible. At the same time, the coverage of the social security program for the rural population will continue to be limited in the near future. Moreover, because of accelerated population movement triggered by the market oriented economy, more young people tend to leave the village for cities. At a result, while rural fertility is higher than urban fertility, the degree of population aging turns out to be higher in rural areas than in urban areas. Compared to 1982, in 2000 the proportion of elderly aged 65 and above in urban areas has increased from 4.5 percent to 6.4 percent, while in rural areas it increased from 5.0 percent to 7.5 percent (Gu 2006). Hand in hand with looming crisis of old age support, fragile family is another emerging challenge that China will have to face. China s single children aged 0 to 30 has accumulated to nearly 160 million (NBS 2006), with over a third of all Chinese households have only one child. Should the current birth control policy stay intact and low fertility level in continuation, by the middle of the current century, half of Chinese women aged 60 will have only one child. Such a large number of families with only one child, often against the will of the parents, not only poses great challenge for providing both material and emotional supports to the elderly, but also present serious social risks for Chinese families, as well as for the whole society. The tragic event of the 11

12 earthquake of May 2008 in Sichuan, in which thousands of families lost their only children, serves only as a wakeup call that reminds us the high risk of a fragile family system. In such extreme misfortune, parents lose their only children and for many of them, are too late to replace their lost only children. Unfortunately, this kind of risk is not limited to rare events of natural disaster, but happens in daily life. Even with the low mortality level, some Chinese parents would have to face a most unfortunate reality should their children die before themselves and they will live in total loneliness. For Chinese parents who rely on their children for old age emotional and instrumental if not financial support, the prospect of dying alone is certainly among the cruelest imaginable. Multiplying the percentages here with the large number of only children parents in China so far, the sheer number of elderly living without any children is more than significant. With fertility level below the replacement level for nearly two decades, the momentum of population decline has already been set in motion in China. Although China s population is still growing at a rate of 5 per thousand per year, it is really an echo effect of age structure. China s intrinsic growth rate, which measures a population growth based on only fertility and mortality levels of the population, while leaving out the effect of population age structure, has flipped from around 20 per thousand in the mid-1970s to about negative 20 per thousand in 2005 (Wang et al. 2008). In other words, China s population s growth potential has reversed itself from doubling itself every 30 years to halving itself every 30 years. The decline of fertility and the built up of negative momentum are also visible in the number of children in China every year. According to NBS (2009), the total number of births reached a historical low in 2006, with a total of only a little less than 16 million born in that year, about two-thirds of the 1987 level. Even with the boom cohorts of those born in the mid-1980s come into their peak years of marriage and childbearing, China s annual number of birth will not exceed the level of 2000, followed with a precipitous drop in the years to come, if nothing is done to reverse the fertility trend (Figure 5). [Figure 5 about here] Note that the project presented in Figure 5 is based on an assumption that Chinese fertility would stay at TFR=1.6, which is already higher than the current observed level. Even if China s fertility level is to be raised to the replacement level within next 30 years (by 2037), China s population decline will continue for another half century or more. In the process, China s total population size will be reduced by 220 to 300 million from its peak, and the median age of the population will increase drastically, from 30 in 2000 to close to 50 in the next four decades. Should China not be able to raise its fertility to the replacement level, by the end of the current century, China will have a population size only about half of what it is now. A rapid population aging and a sustained process of population decline in China have profound implications for China s as well as the world s economy. A smaller birth cohort will naturally convert into a smaller labor cohort in later decades. This is a less noticed implication of China s changing demography. China s economic boom in the last thirty has relied on one crucial factor, namely a young and productive labor force. Such a labor force, a non-repeatable historical product due to the rapid demographic transition, was present fortuitously as the Chinese economy was about to take off. The benefit of such a demographic fortune, measured as the demographic dividend, is estimated to have accounted for 15 to 25 percent of China s economic growth between 1980 and 2000 (Cai and Wang 1999, Wang and Mason 2008). For the most part, China has so far exhausted its demographic fortune measured by the first demographic dividend, or the change in the support ratio between effective producers and effective consumers (Wang and Mason 2008). It is predicted that if current fertility continues, China will soon observe a rapid decline in labor supply. The reduction of its size will be quite dramatic, a rate of reduction of 100 million per decade, or 10 million per year. And the labor force itself will be aging as well (Guo et 12

13 al. 2006). Labor shortage has been frequently reported in Chinese mass media since the spring of 2004, even during the current economic recession. Chinese economists have started to claim that China s labor force has moved from a period of abundant supply to a period of limited surplus (Cai and Wang 2006). As a result of China s very low fertility in the last two decades, the era of abundant young and inexpensive labor is soon to be history. The number of young labor aged 20 to 24 will come to its peak in the next few years, and followed with a precipitous drop. By 2020, the size and the proportion of the young labor population in this age range is projected to be reduced to a level of historical low, from 125 million in 2010 to only 68 million (Figure 6), a reduced of almost 50 percent. Such a drastic decline in the young labor force not only ushers in for the first time ever in recent Chinese history successive shrinking labor force entrants cohort size, it will also have profound consequences for labor productivity, as these are the most recently educated and tend to be most innovative, as well as for consumption, as these young people are also the most active consumers, from wedding banquets to new housing units and childbearing. As a major player in the global economy, the impact of China s demographic change will certainly go beyond its own geographic boundaries. E. CONCLUDING REMARKS To assess the fertility trends in China, two issues have to be addressed, one is the effect of the government imposed fertility policy on people s childbearing behavior, and another is the possible underreporting associated with the population statistics, particularly the birth statistics. In this paper, we have reviewed a number of empirical studies carried out so far in which the Chinese fertility trends have been carefully examined and even scrutinized, particularly taking into account of the possible underreporting in birth statistics and strict fertility policy from the government. While these studies were carried out most independently by various scholars both Chinese and international, used data from various sources, applied various methods with different approaches, they all come with more or less the same conclusion that China s current fertility has truly dropped to around 1.5, a level much below replacement, even among the lowest in the world. While the arrival of low fertility in China may come as a surprise to some, in this paper, we argue, it should not be seen as something incomprehensible given the most dramatic and rapid socioeconomic transformations witnessed in China over the last three decades. The swift development of the market oriented economy and massive rural to urban population movement have exerted tremendous impact on the various aspects of Chinese society, including people s attitude and behavior on marriage, childbearing, childrearing, as well as the use of modern contraceptives. Field investigations carried out in various parts of the country in recent years have also provided the empirical evidences that while the mean age at first marriage has been moving upward, the norm of ideal family size has been moving downward. Some couples even forgo the privileges of having the second child entitled according to the local fertility policies. All these have actually been predicted by social change and demographic transition theories, and the Chinese experience has shown that China is not an exception. The implication of China s low fertility is an issue in fact very difficult to address since the demographic reality is so new to us and our knowledge and perception in this regard is so poor. But one thing is for sure that the implication will be by all means tremendous, and even revolutionary to China s future development, and the effects exerted from prolong low fertility will soon loom large and become increasingly visible. We have discussed some of the issues in the paper such as turn-over of the population structure, rapid population ageing, fragile nature of the Chinese families with one child, the sharp shrinking of the young labor force, as well as the 13

14 so-called negative momentum in demographic evolution (Lutz et al., 2003). And the future will tell that what we have discussed in the paper might be only the tip of the iceberg what will unfold in the years to come. At the turn of the twenty-first century, below replacement fertility has become a new global demographic reality. With over a fifth of the world s population, China is a newcomer but an important one in the emerging global regime of below replacement fertility. The arrival of below replacement fertility in China calls for a new understanding of population dynamics and a review of population policies to address the issues arising from low fertility. Low fertility as a demographic phenomenon has now been observed not only in Europe but also in Asia, not only in developed countries, but also in developing countries, not only in traditionally low fertility societies but also in traditionally high fertility societies (Gubhaju and Moriki-Durand 2003, Morgan and Taylor 2006). As reminded by Wilson (2004), the human population is crossing a historical, but so far largely unnoticed threshold, i.e., most of the world s population will live in regions with less-than-replacement level fertility than in regions with fertility above 2.1. Below replacement fertility has gradually become a global trend in population dynamics and a concern of international society (UN 2000). It is even claimed to be the norm in post-transitional societies (Demeny 1997; Bongaarts 2001). Our understanding of the global trend toward below replacement fertility as well as the issues associated with the emerging demographic dynamics is still at its beginning stage. References Bongaarts, John and Griffith Feeney (1998). On the quantum and tempo of fertility, Population and Development Review 24(2): Bongaarts, John (2001). Fertility and Reproductive Preferences in Post-Transitional Societies. Population and Development Review 27, Supplement: Global Fertility Transition: Bongaarts, John (2002). The end of fertility transition in the developed world, Population and Development Review 28(3): Cai, Fang and Wang Meiyan (2006). Aging and Labor Shortage in China. Chapter 5 in Greenbook of Population and Labor (2006), Report on China s Population and Labor No. 7, Demographic Transition and Its Social and Economic Consequences (edited by Fang Cai and Baochang Gu): Beijing: Social Science Academic Press. Cai, Yong (2008). Assessing fertility levels in China using variable-r method. Demography, vol. 45(2): Cai, Yong (2009). Does Enrollment Statistics Provide a Gold Standard for Chinese Fertility Estimates? Population Research. 33(4). (In Chinese) Coale, A. J. (1984). Rapid Population Change in China, Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Demeny, Paul. (1997). Replacement-Level Fertility: The Implausible Endpoint of the Demographic Transition. In G.W. Jones, R.M. Douglas, J.C. Caldwell, and R.M. D Souza (eds.), The Continuing Demographic Transition. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Feeney, Griffith and Jianhua Yuan Below replacement fertility in China? A close look at recent evidence. Population Studies 48:

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