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Fertility Intention of Urban Youth: the Impact of Family Stress and Social Welfare Perception on Their Plans for Having Children

Author(s)

Wang Chenchen*

Affiliation(s)

School of Politics and Law, University of Jinan, Jinan, Shandong, China *Corresponding Author

Abstract

With the background of continuous low birth rates around the world, the population structure and social development are facing severe problems. This trend is visible in developed countries that have finished the demographic transition, as well as in many developing countries in China. In China, the consistently low intention to have children among young urban people has become a serious problem of demographic change. Based on the literature review method, this paper takes the two main variables of family role stress and social welfare perception to explore how they affect the fertility intentions of young people in cities. Based on the above research results, it is found that the several types of family role stress are gender role conflict, intergenerational conflict and work-family conflict, while social welfare perception refers to how young people evaluate the accessibility, sufficiency and credibility of policy support. The two forces work together to provide both the push and pull factors for people's decisions; at the same time, they are closely related and change over time during the process of fertility intention formation and realisation. Based on the analysis above, this paper proposes a general framework for the stress-perception-plan model, points out shortcomings in the current research, such as a lack of progress in mechanism studies, the absence of dynamic process capture and cultural integration, etc., and put forward suggestions for future research and related policies.

Keywords

Fertility Intention; Urban Youth; Family Role Stress; Social Welfare Perception

References

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