Shanghai: Pioneer of fertility decline in People's Republic of China--trends and determinants of fertility transition, 1950-1984.

摘要

This dissertation is an attempt to use all possible sources of data to search for the determinants of fertility transition in Shanghai Municipality, People's Republic of China, during the past three decades. The basic questions to be addressed in the study are: Why did the fertility decline rapidly within a short period in Shanghai? Why did fertility transition start earlier in Shanghai than elsewhere in the country? What was the role of government's family planning program in the decline?; Four major approaches are applied in the study: (1) qualitative analysis on the main factors affecting the early onset of fertility transition, (2) time series analysis to examine the temporal changes in fertility and age of marriage at the aggregated level, (3) disaggregated analysis on the determinants of children ever born, for a same age group of women at different time points, and (4) Logit regression analysis on the determinants of the probability of having a high-parity child.; This study finds that an adequate explanation of the rapidity, timing, and extent of Shanghai's fertility transition involves four major interwoven components. First, Shanghai's high socioeconomic development level, pervasive and dramatic social changes, and its urban characteristics played a decisive role in inducing an earlier and faster fertility decline in the city than that in the remaining parts of the country. Second, among various behavioral as well as ideological changes regarding to human reproduction, a new norm of fertility regulation was the most important factor that created a constantly increasing demand for birth control, and accelerated the pace of Shanghai's fertility decline. Third, a well organized and successful family planning program resulted in a pervasive increase in awareness of and accessibility to effective and acceptable means of fertility regulation, and remarkably speeded up the spread of innovation such as a new idea or a new technological achievement from one social group to another. Fourth, a centralized political system and a highly controlled social life through a bureaucratic organization exceptionally facilitated the government to implement its population control policy.