Educational Assortative Mating and Second Birth Progressions in China

Simin DAI , Center of Demography (CED, UAB)

Despite China's phased abolition of the one-child policy, fertility rates remain relatively low. While whether to have a second child becomes more flexible, “who is having a second baby and who is not” remains unclear in China. This study highlights an understudied aspect: the association between couples' educational pairing and second-birth transitions. I apply piecewise exponential models from five waves of the Chinese Family Panel Studies (2012-2020) on a sample of 285774 couple-years. My results indicate an opposite trend as to what resource pooling theory would predict. Couples with the highest combined educational attainment ("both college and more") have the lowest likelihood of having a second child, while those with the lowest combined educational levels ("both primary and less") exhibit the highest second-birth risks. Among heterogeneously educated couples, hypergamous couples (i.e., husbands better educated than wives) consistently show higher second-birth risks than their hypogamous counterparts (i.e., wives better educated than husbands). This pattern holds across both “high-middle” and “middle-low” educational combinations. Notably, a woman's education is more influential in reducing the likelihood of a second birth than a man's. Despite changes in the policy context, the results suggest that couples are slow to transition to higher parities, especially among homogamous highly educated couples. The socio-economic determinants of continued low fertility in China demand further research attention.

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 Presented in Session P1. Fertility, Family, Life Course