Abstract
The present population economic theories are all established at a hypothesis: parents are fully rational in decisions at every birth. The hypothesis is actually contradicted with the reality. This paper attempts to explain the fertility behavior of persons with different cultural degrees and income levels without the fully rational hypothesis. The paper puts forward a hypothesis that fertility rate has negative correlation with cultural degree, and proves it through two routes. One is higher cultural degree means longer education duration, which must occupy female reproductive period. The other route is that persons who get higher cultural degree are generally more rational, therefore less accidental pregnancy and childbearing occur.
Highlights
Nowadays, population growth and its interactions with the surrounding economic environment attract much attention from governments, research institutes and scholars
China has been carrying out family planning policy since 1970s, to coordinate the development of population with the development of the economy, society, resources and environment
Women with above-college education generally married at ages older than 23 years old (They are 23 years old when they finish college education), beyond the limitation of family planning policy
Summary
Population growth and its interactions with the surrounding economic environment attract much attention from governments, research institutes and scholars. Economists contributed much on population theories, because population plays important role in economic behaviors as producers as well as consumers. Since it is only through the combined effect of fertility, mortality and migration, that the size of population changes, any analysis of the links between the economy and population growth must identify the economic factors responsible for changes in the behavior of these three components, especially fertility behavior. Parents are considered to be rational, calculating cost and benefits at every birth, and as a result the model has something to say about the spacing of children[1,2,3]. This paper attempts to explain the fertility behavior of persons with different cultural degrees without the fully rational hypothesis
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