VID Colloquium
China’s Recent Fertility Levels and Their Long-term Impacts
Zhongwei Zhao, University of California
Date: Mon, 3 October 2011 , Time: 11:00 - 12:00
The study of China's fertility has been in a strange situation since the early 1990s. On the one hand, more censuses, fertility surveys and annual surveys of population changes have been conducted that should provide sufficient data for detailed investigation of recent fertility decline; on the other hand, key fertility data are increasingly affected by reporting problems and internal inconsistency that form an obstacle to such investigations. This is partly due to the fact that while the statistical authority has published some adjusted fertility statistics, it has been rather reluctant to release details of the technique used to make such adjustments since the late 1990s.
In this seminar, I will report one of our recent studies on China’s recent fertility changes. The study investigates the inconsistencies in fertility data obtained from various sources. It then reconstructs two sets of internally consistent fertility statistics using officially released numbers of births and our revised numbers of births. On the basis of these reconstructed statistics, it examines China's recent fertility decline and addresses a number of related issues.
In the seminar, I will also present our analysis of the preliminary results of China’s 2010 population census and the results of United Nations Population Prospects (2010 Revision). Our analysis shows great differences in fertility and population statistics between major demographic data sources.
On the basis of our analysis, we have concluded that while data quality has become a problem in China, under-registration of some fertility data may not be as severe as that implied by the officially adjusted CBRs or TFRs. A drastic fertility reduction occurred in China in the early 1990s. The TFR, rather than staying at 1.8 as suggested by the government, fell to below 1.7 in the second half of the decade and has further declined since. It was very likely to have been around 1.5 or lower level in the last 10 yearsAbout the presenter
Zhongwei Zhao graduated from University of Cambridge (PhD), University of Exeter (MA), and Peking University (BA). Since 2008, he has been a Professor working at the Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute, College of Arts and Social Sciences, the Australian National University. Prior to taking up the present appointment, he was a senior fellow/fellow/research fellow at the Demography Program, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, a senior research associate at the Cambridge Group for the History of population and Social Structure, a Bye-Fellow at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge.
Zhongwei Zhao has been doing research in the following areas: Environmental impacts on population health and mortality; Mortality and fertility transition in East Asia, especially China; Computer micro-simulation in demographic research; Historical demography; Changes in families, households and kinship networks; Demographic estimation and mortality models; and Demographic impacts of famines.