ICSA Online Webinar: Cohort trends in Chinese fertility: Reconstructing histories and decomposing education effects

Topic:  Cohort trends in Chinese fertility: Reconstructing histories and decomposing education effects

Abstract: Why have Chinese birth cohorts had such different fertility? Reconstructing fertility histories from the 1940s to the 1990s and decomposing age-specific rates, this talk shows education mattered more than social origins to China's fertility transition.

Speaker: Marco Laghi, PhD Student in Sociology at New York University and the Center for Applied Social and Economic Research at NYU Shanghai

Moderator: Yongai Jin, Professor and Chair of Demography, Center for Population and Development Studies, Renmin University of China

Time: October 9, 2026, 9 AM-10 AM Hong Kong SAR

Link: https://hku.zoom.us/meeting/register/KJyjwvdUSbiuCIiNXf8ERQ

Summary

Total fertility rates falling below replacement have raised the alarm on "lowest-low" fertility. Yet, some demographers emphasize that fertility is better considered as a changing distribution between and within cohorts, especially in developmental contexts like China, where social change and policy have been so dynamic and consequential for fertility. Compulsory education laws, college expansion, and other social policies have differing effects across cohorts as the population develops. Reconstructing fertility histories of women surveyed in the China Family Panel Studies, I observe birth cohorts with completed and ongoing fertility born in the 1940s up to the 1990s. I present age-specific fertility rates across cohorts and decompose these ASFRs to examine counterfactual fertility in reference to education expansion policies to explain changes in ASFR. These results demonstrate the importance of education over social origins to China's fertility transition story. I compare these results with the changing qualitative value of education in predicting marginal fertility across cohorts, observing fertility delay and decline across education groups. These results are consistent with a permanent difference model of differential fertility.

Bio

Marco Laghi is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at New York University and the Center for Applied Social and Economic Research (CASER) at NYU Shanghai. His research focuses on social stratification and demography with a special focus on children's education and healthy development in China, the United States, and across the world. He adopts methods and techniques from across disciplines to re-examine key questions of population and development. He applies his work to answer both practical and theoretical questions, such as children's adaptation to climate change as well as the changing value of education, work, and the family in today’s world.