National and regional trends in ideal family size in China

Ideal family sizes [IFS] are useful in indicating both possible future directions of fertility in a given society as well as providing a ‘barometer’ to general societal-level attitudes towards childbearing and families. In China, an improved understanding of IFS can go some way to examining both the possible consequences of future reforms in family planning legislation and, related to this, to judge whether the country has fallen into the ‘Low Fertility Trap’ where small families become normalised.

We will present the results of a meta-review of almost 100 studies of Chinese IFS. Even after readjustment for ‘politically correct’ response bias, IFS in China are well below replacement rate in both rural and urban areas, pointing to the internalisation of the one child family. Rather than a residual of family planning restrictions, we show IFS reported in China are similar to those reported elsewhere in Hong Kong and Taiwan. This accords with much recent research which has emphasised the role of urbanisation, economic development and social change in driving fertility decline in China rather than the explicit effect of family planning restrictions.

This suggests that reform of the family planning restrictions may not have a major impact upon period or cohort TFR in China.