社会资本如何影响青年居民生育意愿——基于转型中国背景的实证研究

How Does Social Capital Affect Youth Fertility Intentions——Empirical Study in Transitional China

社会资本的丰富理论意涵能够弥补既有文献在讨论生育意愿时未能结合个体家庭特征和社会经济结构特征的不足,为改善生育意愿提供了新视角。研究深入剖析了个体社会资本积累影响青年居民生育意愿的一般理论逻辑,并结合转型中国背景提出了社会资本的生育意愿影响效应在中国可能存在的具体机制。实证检验显示,一方面,结构性社会资本和认知性社会资本均对青年居民生育意愿具有正向显著影响,这种影响在不同青年群体间存在异质性;另一方面,转型中国情境赋予了社会资本影响生育意愿的具体机制,可以通过心理缓释效应提升青年居民幸福感,通过规范转换效应改善青年居民的育儿态度,进而提升生育意愿。研究拓展了社会资本影响生育意愿的研究视野,有利于中国本土化生育理论的构建,为应对中国低生育问题提供新的政策启示。

The theoretical implications of social capital can compensate for ignoring the combination individual family factors and socioeconomic structural factors while discussing fertility intentions,providing a new perspective for improving fertility intentions.This study provides an in-depth analysis of the general theoretical logic of the influence of individual social capital on youth fertility intentions and proposes a mechanism in the context of transitional China.The empirical tests show that,structural and cognitive social capital both have positive and significant effects on the youth fertility intentions,which are heterogeneous across youth groups.The background of transformation in China forms a specific mechanism of these effects:social capital could enhance youth happiness through psychological release effect and improve youth fertility attitudes through norm-shift effect,further increase fertility intentions.The article expands the research perspective on the impact of social capital on fertility intention,which is conducive to the construction of China's localized fertility theory and can provide new policy insights for addressing China's low fertility problem.