Two-child policy, gender income and fertility choice in China

摘要

We construct a three-period overlapping generation model to explore the effectiveness of the fertility policy and the factors affecting the fertility choices in China. The results show that there is a significant U-shaped relationship between female income and two-child fertility choice. The analysis of the effectiveness of the universal two-child policy suggests that a threshold exists for the fertility policy that is estimated to be between 1 and 2. Therefore, even if the two-child policy is further relaxed, it will exert little influence on fertility choice. Thus, other forms of fertility policies should be combined to improve the fertility rate.