Poster #142 - All roads lead to Rome? Sub-national patterns and variations in China’s pro-natalist family policy configuration

• In Event: Friday Poster Reception

Abstract

Decades of stringent population control and a persistent “childcare deficit” have driven a sharp fertility decline in China. In 2022, China recorded its first population decrease since 1949, with a fertility rate of 1.09, ranking among the lowest globally. In response, the State Council relaxed birth control and encouraged local governments to expand family welfare following the three-child policy in 2021. Building on local policy experimentation, the Central Government issued a national Fertility Support Scheme in October 2024, outlining 13 targeted measures for childbirth and childcare services.

The state’s paradigm shift from family planning to pro-natalism creates new gaps for China’s family policy research. It encompasses broader policy domains, such as government-funded childcare services, financial assistance, and paternity leave, that remain underexplored. Moreover, unlike the typical top‑down approach, China’s family welfare expansion followed a bottom-up dynamic, where local pilot initiatives informed national measures, indicating significant city-level variations that are worth closer examination.

Against this backdrop, this study maps and classifies city‑level variations in China’s family policy configurations between the 2021 three‑child policy and the 2024 national scheme. Using stratified sampling, 85 cities were selected from low‑, medium‑, and high‑GDP clusters across provinces. For each city, policy documents were collected from local government portals covering four domains: cash support (e.g., child allowance, childbirth medical reimbursement, and housing subsidies for families with minor children), time support (parental leaves), service support (e.g., the availability, affordability, and quality regulations of government-funded childcare service), and mothers’ employment support.

A text‑to‑code approach was applied to capture eligibility and benefit standards of each policy domain, with non‑numeric criteria classified by their stringency or benefit level. Cluster analysis was then conducted on composite scores along four dimensions: policy generosity, measured by the eligibility and benefit standard by different domains;  pro‑natalist intention, measured by benefit gaps between one‑child and multi‑child families; gender equity, captured by parents’ leave‑sharing flexibility and maternal employment support; and social equity, reflected in childbirth benefit differences by parents’ employment status.

Our preliminary findings suggest that cities with higher GDP levels generally belong to clusters offering more generous childcare services and stronger maternal employment assistance. In contrast, cash and time support do not show clear GDP‑based differentiation, as evidenced by outliers like Shanghai, a high‑GDP city with relatively limited cash benefits. Additionally, coastal and higher‑GDP cities tend to exhibit greater gender and social equity in policy design, while inland cities display stronger pro‑natalist policy intentions. We will continue to refine these results and explore the macro‑level determinants underlying these patterns.

This study demonstrates how cities developed distinct policy priorities before the introduction of a unified national framework, shedding light on local discretion in policy design and offering a comprehensive view of China’s evolving family policy landscape. It also contributes to updating China’s family policy analytic framework by incorporating emerging policy components that reflect the state’s ongoing shift to pro-natalism.

Author

• Jiayin Yuan, University of Hong Kong
  Presenting Author