Should China Allow Couples to Have a Second Child?

China’s family planning policy is back in the spotlight.Guangdong, the country’s most populous province according to the latest population census,has officially applied to the Central Government for permission for it lifting family planning restrictions.If the application is approved,couples in which either the husband or wife is an only child will be allowed to have a second child,according to Zhang Feng, family planning chief in Guangdong.

Analysis of couples who have second children in Shanghai

The relaxation of fertility policy in China makes it possible to observe and under-stand the patterns of childbearing behavior in low fertility settings.This paper takes Shanghai,a city with ultra-low fertility over the long term,as an example to analyze families who have had a second child since the adjustment of China’s fertility policy.The paper reports the major results of a survey of couples with Shanghai house-hold registration(hukou)who have had a second child,and makes comparisons with other relevant survey.It seeks to answer the question"Who are the couples giving birth to second child?"The results show that most of the women who have had a second child after implementation of the Selective Two-child Policy in 2014 were born in the late 1970s and 1980s.Couples who had higher education levels and higher incomes,and in which the woman worked as a full-time housewife or worked in a less intense job with scheduling flexibility were more likely to have a second child.The ability of a couple to get help from their own parents for childcare,and the gender of the first child also affected the decision to have a second child.This study reveals that couples who have a second child tend to be those with better than average childcare resources.This suggests that formulating reasonable public poli-cies aimed at reducing the cost of childbearing and childrearing would be an effec-tive way to further release fertility potential.

Assessing the impact of C-section at first birth on the second birth

Taking data from the China Fertility Survey 2017 for nine provinces in southwestern and south-central China,we calculated differences in C-section rates among women of different ages,and with different types of hukou and different levels of educa-tion.We used the Cox proportional hazards model and a binary logistic regression method to examine the impact of C-section at the first birth on the intention of hav-ing a second child and actually giving birth to a second child under the Universal Two-child Policy.This study comes to the following conclusions:(1)the C-section rate is generally high among women,especially among those who are older,have non-agricultural hukou,or have a junior college or above education level;(2)sim-ilar to the research findings of scholars in other countries,women having C-sec-tion at first birth are 16-20%less likely to have a second child than women having no C-section at first birth;and(3)women having C-section at first birth are less inclined to have a second child.