Supervisor(s): Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Sponsor(s): Institute of Population and Labor Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (IPLE-CASS) CN：11-1043/C
Chinese Journal of Population Science, sponsored by Institute of Population and Labor Economics at Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (IPLE-CASS), has published a large number of influential and high quality theory papers, reflects the latest academic research in the field of population and labor and interdisciplinary timely. It is a good way for people to understand the demographic development and provides theoretical information and countermeasures for the state and government decision-making departments. Chinese Journal of Population Science prefers research papers, reviews and surveys with high quality in the field of population and related fields. The contents include population theory and policy research, population statistics, population and economy, human resources and labor economy, social security research, population and society, international comparison of population, population and ecological environment, ethnic minority population and family planning theory and practice, etc.
This article discusses disputes and differences in the problems and research results of the basic data, mathematical models and parametric hypotheses about fertility policies. It points out that there are relatively prominent conflicts and differences in terms of current fertility level, total number of only child, total number and structure of women of childbearing age in the data of China existing censuses and sample surveys. The author thinks that macro population models are unsuitable for the research of the two-child fertility policy for couples where either the husband or the wife is from a single-child family (hereinafter referred to as selective two-child policy) and other fertility policies, and suggests using the micro random population simulation model to solve the problems of data quality and range projection. This article further discusses potential newly-born population accumulation caused by selective two-child policy and universal two-child policy, reflects on the problems, difficulties and solutions of fertility policy adjustment research, and points out major problems that China should pay attention to in the future fertility policy adjustment research.
Every family has its own needs, plans and decisions about fertility, in which females play the principal role. Under the background of low fertility level in China, the fertility demand of a family and fertility decisions made by females dominate fertility behaviors and results. It is believed in this article that, in the process of adjusting and improving fertility policies, families and females must be taken into consideration. Though changes made in the number of children in a family are merely one or two, public policies should attach importance to family demands, make it easy for families to arrange child-bearing and create a child rearing-friendly social environment, and formulate corresponding policies to support females to achieve a balance between family and career.
According to China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission, by the end of 2014 1.069 million couples where either the husband or wife is a single child had submitted applications for a second child. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, China’s birth population of 2014 was 16.87 million, 470,000 more than that of 2013. Some scholars conclude from these data that the implementation of the two-child fertility policy for couples where either the husband or the wife is from a single child family is basically in line with the expectations. However, this paper believes that the policy actually meets a cold reception, and it’s a misjudgment to say that the implementation is in line with the expectations. The real expectations for adjusting fertility policies should be making the fertility rate rebound to and even above the replacement level.
By analyzing relevant reports on families bereft of their only child by news media and by focusing on the social construction on the image of the families, this article finds bias of the reports which have partially constructed a "media image" of the families as "unsolvable," "suffering" and "specialized," and implied that "only child policy leads to the fact of losing the only child." The labels about the families bereft of their only child delivered by the media are supported by some researchers in their academic position, value orientation and policy suggestions. The specialized construction of the families by both the media and the academia may prevent these families from recovering from the loss of the only child and integrating into the society, which may also result in a misreading and criticism of the family planning policy. Therefore, this article suggests that media reports should remove the "labeled" image of these families, the academia should study these families based on the general background of population structure, and the special support policy for the families bereft of their only child should integrate itself into the community-based relief system. The life education and care for the only child should be specially focused. For the families bereft of their only child, the social support on psychological level and the re-cognition and re-construction for the meaning of life are essentially significant.
Based on the economic growth model with age structure as a factor introduced by Lindh and Malmberg, this paper analyzes the sample of sub industries of China’s industrial economy from 2009 to 2010. The results show that if regarding the contribution of specific age groups to economic growth rate as a productivity, then, after controlling the industry types and regional factors, the productivity demonstrates an inverted U shape with the abnormal subsidence near the two ends with the change of the age; in this form, young workers have no significant positive economic contribution, while middle-aged workers have the greatest contribution to the industrial economic growth and the relatively high proportion of middle-aged labor force is likely to promote industrial growth in the central and western regions.
This paper uses the micro data from the One Thousand Villages Survey conducted by Shanghai University of Finance and Economics in 2013, and analyzes migrant workers’ secondary cross-region flow with reference to the human capital framework. It finds that migrant workers frequently engage with secondary cross-region flow activities, which benefit the improvement of their income, with 64.0% of migrant workers having experienced secondary cross-region flow. Although migrant workers’ secondary cross-region flow is a type of human capital investment, it differs from the primary rural-urban flow significantly. For those migrant workers who are older and with lower level of human capital, they may be more likely to move to other cities through the secondary cross-region flow route, and this finding is not in line with the conventional explanation offered by the human capital theory. The main reason for this is that China’s household registration system has twisted migrant workers’ secondary flow.
The paper uses a major labor-supplying county in mid-China (Xiushui County, Jiangxi Province) as a case study to measure the domestic violence against migrant women using three dimensions: physical violence, psychological violence, and sexual violence, and analyzes the major factors causing the domestic violence against this group based on individual family factors, social capital, traditional family culture, and city integrating. The results have shown that migration increases the risk of domestic violence against women; the higher a woman’s education level, the more likely she suffers serious physical violence; good health helps to curb domestic violence; social capital variables which affect domestic violence include asset-loaning, major-decision making, size of the social support network, and density of family support; the more strongly a woman identifies with traditional family values, and the more she wishes to migrate, the more likely she suffers from domestic violence. Therefore, a protection mechanism under the government should be established in the spirit of rule of law, diversification, socialization, and specialization, so as to invigorate the diversified entity’s function in preventing and controlling domestic violence.
This article utilized data collected from the longitudinal survey “Research on Livelihood Welfare Condition of Senior in Anhui Province” to establish an individual growth model, to research on the impact of migrated grown-up children in this region on the mental welfare development locus of senior citizens in the sample. It turned out that the migration of grown up children had a negative impact on their elderly parents’ mental welfare, while children staying in the local region had a protective effect, which supports the hypothesis as the impact of stress-health consequence framework on the subjective welfare result. Further analysis found out that the impact of children’s migration on mental welfare of their elderly parents depended on age and the cohort effect. The mental welfare of senior citizens demonstrates nonlinear trend with age. For the mental welfare level of citizens of advanced age, those who have migrated children, especially those whose children have all migrated drop much faster than those whose children have not migrated. And the development locus of mental welfare of senior citizens whose children have various migration conditions is clearly stratified by age.
