Abstract:

Based on the unbalanced panel data of CHNS from 1997 to 2011, this paper empirically investigates informal employment’s effect on married women’s individual fertility willingness by constructing the individual fertility willingness variable and using the counting model. Fertility willingness refers to the number of children under individual optimal fertility decision, that is, the number of children that individuals want to have if they were notrestricted by the one-child policy. Studies have confirmed that compared with those with formal employment, people with informal employment usually have a lower level of income, welfare security, cost of default and termination, and job stability. In addition, they also have difficulty in obtaining training related to vocational skills and re-employment. However, the income level, employment opportunities, the education level and women’s family status are the important factors affecting the fertility willingness. According to Becker’s family fertility decision-making model, compared with formal employment, the income decline caused by informal employment will reduce individuals’ fertility willingness through the income effect and improve individuals’ fertility willingness through the substitution effect. The income effect means that the income decrease caused by informal employment will increase the budget constraint and decrease the purchasing power, which makes the individual tend to have fewer children. The substitution effect means that the income decrease caused by informal employment will decrease the opportunity cost of having children, the need of inheriting family wealth and the social status through children’s human capital, which makes the individual pay more attention to the number rather than the quality of the children, and as a result, the individual tends to have more children. According to the consistent conclusion from the previous literature, the increase of the income level will reduce the individual fertility willingness, and it can be inferred that informal employment will increase the individual fertility willingness, that is, the substitution effect is dominant and the net effect is positive.
This paper makes fully use of the characteristics of CHNS data and constructs the counting variable of married women’s fertility willingness and the dual virtual variable of the informal employment. The counting model controls the variables of married women’s individual characteristics, their spouses’ individual characteristics and the community characteristics, and also adds the fixed effect of the region and the time. The empirical results show that there is no over-dispersion of the fertility willingness, and it is more appropriate to choose the standard Poisson regression. The estimation coefficient of Poisson regression and its marginal effect indicates that compared with the formal employment, the informal employment significantly increases the number of children that married women want to have, and the net effect is positive. After using the proportion of the informal employment in the community as the instrumental variable of the individual informal employment to overcome the potential endogenous problem, the study finds that the informal employment has significantly increased the number of married women who are willing to have children by 0.465. The empirical results are still robust after the possible selectivity bias of samples are corrected, the individual operators are distinguished from thenon-individual operators, different control variables are added, the individual birth years and ages as well as individual income levels are distinguished, In recent years, China’s labor market reform has emphasized that every labor should have decent employment. In 2008, the new Labor Contract Law and a series of labor laws and regulations were promulgated one after another, which helped to strengthen the enforcement of various policies to protect workers’ rights and interests, regulate the signing of labor contracts and improve employees’ social security, etc. The implementation of this new Labor Contract Law has a positive impact on married women’s individual fertility willingness by weakening the income reduction caused by informal employment. Further study byusing difference in difference method with propensity score matching finds that the new Labor Contract Law implemented in 2008 significantly reduces the fertility willingness of married women, and weakens the positive effect of informal employment on the fertility willingness of married women. This not only to a certain extent proves the effectiveness of the implementation of the new Labor Contract Law, but also partly explains the reasons for the decline of the fertility rate.
The research findings have the following policy significance. First, the one-child policy is not the only way to control the population. The government can indirectly regulate the population by increasing the proportion of formal employment, and then realize the transition from compulsory fewer births to voluntary adoption of fertility quality instead of quantity. This will also help speed up the training of a large number of middle and high-level skilled labors for China, so as to achieve the goal of promoting China’s industry to a higher level in the global value chain and make up for the skill gap in the developing process of the digital economy. Second, when the full liberalization of the two-child policy is ineffective, the government can achieve the goal of stable employment and improve the fertility willingness of married women by encouraging flexible employment and advocating flexible working system for formal employees. Third, the implementation of the new Labor Contract Law in 2008 has played a positive role in improving the employment stability and the social security of informal employees, but it has also reduced the fertility willingness of informal employees. Therefore, the government could also control the population via adjusting labor laws and regulations. To sum up, by taking advantage of the regulatory role of informal employment, the government can formulate more effective family planning policies to solve the aging problem.

Key words: Informal Employment, Poisson Model, Fertility Willingness, Labor Protection

摘要：

本文利用1997—2011年CHNS的非平衡面板数据,考察非正规就业对已婚女性个体生育意愿的影响。理论分析显示,较之正规就业,非正规就业引致的收入下降通过收入效应降低生育意愿,通过替代效应提高生育意愿。实证结果表明,非正规就业显著提高了已婚女性的生育意愿,替代效应占据主导地位。在克服内生性问题后,非正规就业使已婚女性愿意生育的孩子数量增加了0.465个。新《劳动合同法》的实施弱化了非正规就业对已婚女性生育意愿的正向影响。因此,政策制定者可通过鼓励灵活就业和完善相关劳动法律法规等方式调节非正规就业比例,以间接调控人口数量来破局老龄化问题。

关键词: 非正规就业, 泊松模型, 生育意愿, 劳动保护