A Multilevel Study of the Impact of Egalitarian Attitudes Toward Gender Roles on Fertility Desires in China

Abstract

Although several demographic studies have proposed that the relationship between gender egalitarian attitudes and fertility may depend on gender context of a region, to our knowledge, the interaction between contextual- and micro-level egalitarian attitudes has yet to be empirically tested. Using data from the Chinese General Social Survey carried out in 2015, we undertake the Multilevel Logistic Regression Analysis of 130 counties across China to investigate the association between egalitarian attitudes and fertility desires at the individual and county level. The results show that gender egalitarian attitudes are associated with lower fertility desires for both men and women at the individual and county level, and the negative effect is stronger for women than for men. Furthermore, the county-level egalitarian norm shows a positive cross-level interaction effect on desires among women but not among men. In counties with stronger egalitarian norms, women holding egalitarian attitudes have higher fertility desires than others, while in counties with weaker egalitarian norms, the situation is the opposite. Overall, our findings suggest that China is still in the early stages of the transition from a traditional to a gender egalitarian, and thus the actual and desired fertility in China may continue to fall in coming years. However, the positive cross-level interaction effect means that institutional support for promoting gender equality in all areas of life can improve the low fertility trend.