Professor Fudan: Both encouraging fertility and restricting fertility have excessively interfered with the family's fertility behavior.

Professor Ren Yuan, Institute of Population Studies, Fudan University.

Although there has been a continuous debate on the fertility data and there is considerable uncertainty in the future population forecast, we are quite certain that the population growth in China will reach its peak around 2025-2030, and there will be a long-term population decline.

The aging trend of China's population structure is inevitable, and the proportion of working-age population will continue to decline.

Even though the fertility rate in China has rebounded after the adjustment of the birth policy, the effect of the rebound is not significant.

Two kinds of population policies

There is still considerable debate on the current fertility level. There are still different views on whether the fertility rate will start to rise, continue to decline or continue to decline after a period of rise after the "two-child policy". However, there is still considerable confidence that China will continue to maintain a low fertility rate. In the next few decades, the lifetime fertility rate of the population will return to the replacement level with a small probability.

If we are aware of the certainty of population changes, we should pay more attention to how to adapt to population changes to achieve good social and economic development, rather than focusing on changing population changes and population patterns. That is to adapt to the decline of labor force, improve the organic composition of capital and improve the labor productivity of workers, promote employment and strive to reduce the decline of labor participation rate; Adapt to the long-term low fertility society and enhance the ability of family development; And the economic and social institutional arrangements to adapt to the aging population and build an aging society. These should be the focus of the current population policy. We should adapt to the inherent laws of population changes, prepare for the emerging low-fertility society, the developing aging society and the immigrant society with a large number of people flowing, and improve the coordinated relationship between population and development, instead of simply trying to adjust the population quantity, structure and distribution in violation of the laws.

However, we should also realize that population change itself has considerable uncertainty. Especially if the short-term change of population is quite certain, then the long-term change of population is actually in a state of high probability and high probability. Therefore, a good population policy, as well as population policy and other social and economic policies, also needs to make appropriate adjustments to changes in population behavior and population status. Make population development reach a good goal and make population and development achieve good coordination. A successful population policy is considered to be a population policy that can promote the realization of the sustainable development goal and guide the reasonable changes in the population process to achieve this development goal.

Population policy is a public policy aimed at population affairs under the background of population change, including population process intervention, and it is also a public policy dealing with the total population, structure, distribution and other related matters. Due to the long-term emphasis on fertility, population policy has also been attached importance to fertility policy to a large extent. Although this definition may not be accurate, it may not be conducive to adapting to population changes and promoting the improvement of population policies. However, the population policy discussed in this paper still focuses more on the social policy related to fertility problems and fertility.

Therefore, population change and population policy have two kinds of population policies, one is adaptive population policy, and the other is regulatory population policy.

Adaptive population policy is to face the influence of population change, adapt to and respond to related population affairs caused by population change, including actively coping with aging, coping with low fertility society, coping with demographic changes and so on.

The other is the regulatory population policy, which dynamically adjusts the situation and structure of the population itself to achieve an ideal goal.

Regulating population policy

Based on the idea that "not only economic production needs planning, but also population can plan" formed during the planned economy period, since 1970' s, we have paid more attention to regulating population policies, intervening in the reproductive behavior of the population, and influencing the changes in the total population and population structure. The initial starting point of this regulatory population policy is to coordinate the serious imbalance between population and development and reduce population poverty. Since 1960s, this population policy has been strictly planned, and the population will be controlled at 65.438+0.2 billion by 2000, thus forming a strict "one-child policy". After entering this century, the population policy has also been used as a tool to achieve the goal of quadrupling the per capita GDP in 2020. Preference for regulatory population policies can generally be manifested in population planning in medium-and long-term planning and five-year planning.

Under the institutional environment of planned economy, population control policy is a relatively administrative means of control. 1after the 1990s, with the establishment of the socialist market economy, more and more indirect means such as social economy have been used to implement population control, that is, the interest-oriented mechanism and economic punishment mechanism of family planning have been widely implemented.

Since 1970' s, China's population policy has actually been fine-tuned, with emphasis on reducing fertility and controlling population growth. After entering this century, with the change of population, the population policy has also been adjusted from "two children alone" to "two children alone". The implementation of the "two-child policy" at the end of 20 15 changed the adjustment direction of this regulation policy. Advocating two children, the policy fertility rate began to be higher than the ideal fertility rate and the actual fertility level, which made the direction of population policy generally become a policy of promoting multiple births, and even the guiding discourse of "encouraging fertility" appeared soon.

However, from the perspective of adjusting population changes through population policy, it is not necessarily without problems to position population policy as "encouraging fertility". This is not because the specific level of the current fertility rate needs further dynamic monitoring. In fact, the current fertility level is basically clear, if not completely clear. Just as we can't delay the reform of the birth policy because of the repeated arguments about the birth data and the real birth level at the beginning of this century, it is out of place to use the statistical argument of the birth level as an excuse to hinder the further reform of the birth policy after the "two children in an all-round way" or to entangle in the data calculation and make the population policy reform lose its direction.

In fact, at present, there may not be enough reasons to achieve the balance between population and development by "encouraging fertility". The labor shortage caused by the decline in fertility rate did not actually exist until the middle of this century. In the medium and long term, the total working-age population in China is not lacking, and its proportion is not extremely low. The role of fertility regulation in reducing the degree of population aging is actually very weak. And objectively speaking, the degree of aging in China is not very high. In the process of population change, the unfavorable relationship between population and development in China will gradually emerge, but it is not very sharp. The relationship between long-term population shrinkage and economic development has not been fully proved. At least so far, empirical data show that there is a positive correlation between aging and economic growth, and there is also a positive correlation between the decline of working-age population and economic growth. For China's economic growth, the allocation of labor resources is still more important than the age structure of the labor force, which makes it ineffective to try to solve economic problems through population policy.

In the transition period of population policy adjustment, too much emphasis on "encouraging fertility" will highlight some logical paradoxes. For example, on the one hand, it encourages childbearing, on the other hand, it levies alimony for three or more children, which is contradictory and contradictory in policy. At present, with the gradual change of population policy, it is obviously more necessary to adjust the internal implementation and implementation mode of birth policy, first give up the administrative restrictions on the number of births, realize "full liberalization and independent birth", and then consider the issue of encouraging birth.

At the same time, the population policy needs to be coordinated with various social policies. Ignoring the reasons why women of childbearing age are unwilling to give birth and unilaterally emphasizing "encouraging childbearing" will actually damage women's status and family development, which will not only be as ineffective as the de facto "two-child policy", but also bring negative opposition to various adjustments of population fertility under the goal of "encouraging childbearing", such as setting up a maternity fund paid by unmarried couples, if it deviates from the population's fertility will.

The socio-economic environment in which the population policy itself plays a role, as well as other related social security and social service policies, need to be coordinated and matched with each other. The situation of employment and economic production mode, the change of social concept and the specific environment of social and economic life all need a gradual transformation process. Therefore, under the realistic external environment, it is unnecessary and feasible to unilaterally advocate "encouraging fertility".

Utopia in imagination

For many scholars, the population control policy still has the future prospect of realizing the "ideal goal" of population. For example, in the early 1980s, 1964- 1980, it was determined that the population target in 2000 would reach 654.38+0.2 billion, so the related policies of the one-child policy were extremely strict. At the beginning of this century, the ideal level of the total fertility rate was set at 1.8, which almost formed the worship of 1.8, which was also based on the ideal design to achieve the national economic development goal in 2020.

Recently, this ideal state is also manifested in the long-term balance of population development. Whether it is the internal balance or the external balance of population, it may be more a principle of development than a specific measure of population development. The internal balance of population development is obviously influenced by Lotgar's static population model and Kafitz's famous judgment, that is, "When a couple has more than two children, the population will continue to explode; If the total fertility rate is less than 2, the population will gradually decline. " Under such consideration, if the population policy can control the population in the ideal state of having two children for a long time, then the comprehensive two-child policy and giving birth according to the policy are conducive to the long-term balance of the population.

Under the regulated population policy, population development is always set as a goal in a planned way, which actually implies the realization of an ideal population state. Such an ideal population situation is sometimes combined with the concepts of population capacity and population carrying capacity, which determines the bottom line and boundary of population planning and becomes the basis for determining population policy in a region.

But in fact, as Saunders said, the so-called ideal population and reasonable population are just a "conceptual imaginary number" and a guiding principle. This ideal population involves quite a number of indicators and various standards, so the so-called ideal population value actually exists in the long-term reality, but it can't be found in practice, or the population actually has an inherent trend of reaching the optimal level. Considering the development of social economy, the continuous development of resources, the progress of technology and the change of resource utilization level, the so-called moderate population and ideal optimal value are just "imaginary utopia". It is unrealistic to determine a long-term optimal population. It is often tailor-made to use this utopia as a guide to population policy and directly intervene in population behavior and chisel out the future population situation with an axe.

In this sense, subjectively trying to adjust the population to achieve the so-called optimum may actually deviate from the inherent law of population development. The rigid adjustment of population policy, of course, aims at pursuing the best, but it may actually lead to non-optimal results and disharmony between population and development. Some population policies oriented to population balance often lead to a new imbalance between population and development.

More importantly, we are increasingly aware that childbirth itself is the independent choice of family couples. On the issue of fertility, we should consider providing corresponding services for fertility, rather than guiding the behavior and quantity of population fertility. The government should provide birth support services for those who want to have children, and also provide public services for contraception and birth control for families who don't want to have children. The government should strengthen fertility services instead of simply encouraging fertility.

Then, if women's willing fertility rate is lower than the policy fertility rate, what we need to consider is not to let women have children according to the policy, but to understand the reasons why the family couple's willing fertility rate and actual fertility behavior are extremely low, so as to change the factors that make women's willingness to have children impossible and support women's rational choice of fertility. Paying too much attention to fertility behavior instead of taking measures to improve the will and rationality of family couples, and then emphasizing encouraging fertility, like restricting fertility, is actually contrary to the interests and needs of family couples.

"Encouraging fertility" and "restricting fertility" are similar concepts, which excessively interfere with the choice of family couples' reproductive behavior, while ignoring that fertility itself is the result of family couples' subjective will and independent choice. The government's population policy has certain limitations. In fact, we should not decide the reproductive behavior of family couples instead of others. Instead, we should reform the external environment through public policies, change the rationality and willingness of the childbearing population, and enhance their knowledge and selectivity.

Therefore, the value of regulating population policy is not actually regulating fertility behavior, but regulating social and economic factors that affect fertility will and fertility, and affecting family couples' understanding, rationality and choice of fertility. This is precisely where the current population policy focusing on the number of births may not pay enough attention.

Adaptive population policy

If we say that in the 1970- 1990' s, population development attached importance to the regulatory population policy, and there were specific considerations to coordinate the tension between population development and economic growth, and the population policy also had the main purpose of promoting the demographic transition with declining fertility rate to a certain extent. In the current period, the tension between population development and economic growth has been alleviated to a considerable extent, and the adjustment effect of population policy itself on population changes is also weakening. Therefore, the government's population policy should gradually change the regulation of fertility itself, but should turn to support and service for fertility, adhere to the family's independent fertility and choice, and turn the population policy to provide fertility services to meet the wishes of families and couples and adapt to the process of population change.

Adaptive population policy is a policy to support family life and strengthen family development ability in the deepening low fertility society, aiming at family miniaturization and weakening family functions. For example, tax support for poor and low-income families to prevent them from lowering their living standards due to the increased economic burden of childbirth. By strengthening reproductive health services and infant care system, we can reduce the pressure brought by children's childbirth and nursing pressure on families, especially women, and so on. According to the practice in northern Europe, these welfare policies supported by families in low fertility society have also been proved to have a positive effect on improving fertility.

The population policy of supporting families in low fertility society also includes improving the social care system for the elderly, which is actually conducive to reducing the family burden of families and couples. In this way, it seems that the improvement of social security for the elderly reduces the necessity of having children. On the other hand, the improvement of social security for the elderly will actually support the family's development ability and help the family to recover its reproduction function.

The low fertility society will further increase the demand for international high-quality labor migration, which will help alleviate the possible labor shortage and play a positive role in the development of migration. Just as Europe promoted the balance of population development through immigration after the second demographic transition, promoting immigration itself will be an endogenous demographic change in a low-fertility society.

The adaptive population policy emphasizes adapting to the specific needs of different population groups, including providing targeted reproductive health services for floating population, young people and elderly women. For example, the interruption of the birth process of floating population seems to be the normal influence of the migration process on the birth, but in a sense, it also shows that the current flow process itself is very "unfriendly to families." The floating population has long working hours and a large number of families are separated, which actually reduces the possibility of floating population giving birth. This kind of family separation also brings risks to the health and family life of both men and women in the family. The adaptive population policy actually requires promoting the family migration of floating population and ensuring their stable family life.

This adaptive population policy is not to restrict or encourage fertility in essence, but to provide fertility services according to the needs of family couples. Women who want to have children should be provided with services to meet their "unrealized pregnancy", and families who don't want to have children should also be provided with contraceptive support for their "unwanted pregnancy". The population policy should adapt to the reproductive needs and behaviors of the population, and provide relevant technical services and public services. Only in this way can we realize brand-new family planning based on the reproductive rationality of family couples and meet their specific needs, reverse the dilemma of population policy faced by China's current family planning system, and return to the original meaning of family planning as an international trend of family planning.

The adaptive population policy should also emphasize the provision of reproductive health, reproductive support, reproductive services and nursing services related to population reproduction in the stages of fertility preparation, pregnancy, perinatal period, newborn and infant according to the specific needs and difficulties of the population. This kind of fertility service itself also needs to realize the whole life cycle fertility service. For example, sexual and reproductive health education should actually begin with children and adolescents. The necessity of reproductive services for women of childbearing age is becoming more and more urgent, and sexual health services for the elderly, including pension services, are also worthy of attention and concern.

Building a fertility-friendly society

In short, the population policy after the completion of the demographic transition shows considerable directional confusion. Whether it is to stabilize the low fertility rate, to "have two children in an all-round way", to "have three children in an all-round way" or to "encourage childbearing", it seems that they have fallen into a policy trap. Population policy encourages fertility in some areas and restricts fertility in some areas; For some groups, it encourages fertility, for some groups, it restricts fertility; It has brought about confusion in policy guidance and implementation.

In order to solve this contradiction, the population policy should weaken the role of its regulatory population policy and change to a more adaptable population policy. In fact, by changing the idea of population policy regulating population process and population situation, population policy can be free from the trouble of encouraging birth or restricting birth; Whether to advocate having a second child or a third child, and so on, are actually meaningless arguments.

If we strengthen the idea that population policy should adapt to population change and population process, we can return the decision-making power to families, while population policy serves families and should adapt to population change. The basis of population policy is to insist that couples choose their own children. Population policy is to provide services, education and guidance to adapt to the reality of low fertility society, the reproductive needs of different groups and different stages of family life cycle, rather than regulation.

Adapt to the reproductive needs of different groups, so that the health of reproductive groups can be guaranteed and their care can be enhanced. It includes reproductive health education and services, contraceptive and assisted reproductive technologies and services, including infant care, child care and early education development. Fertility services that adapt to different stages of the family fertility cycle include strengthening public services and social support before, during and after childbirth. In these areas related to reproductive needs, it is still necessary to attach importance to using the power of the public sector to support fertility and families and help population groups get the services they need. Therefore, this adaptive population policy is actually a public policy to build macro-public services for population fertility and a fertility-friendly society.

Under the construction of a fertility-friendly society from the perspective of this adaptive population policy, the fertility policy can be transformed into a family policy; It can link the birth policy with the welfare policy. Based on the rational choice of families, it should be the goal of population policy to provide services and support for family fertility and enhance family development ability and family welfare.

Under the construction of a fertility-friendly society from the perspective of this adaptive population policy, the population policy can be changed from a policy of managing and regulating the population to a policy of providing public services for the population, thus improving people's health, interests and happiness.

From the perspective of this adaptive population policy, under the background of building a fertility-friendly society, it can also support the government's transformation from a regulatory government to a public service-oriented government and lay a legal foundation for the population policy.

At the same time, it is precisely because the adaptive population policy itself enhances the family's development ability and increases the family's living welfare, thus strengthening the family's income effect. Therefore, a fertility-friendly society will be able to increase the fertility rate endogenously. Some experiences in northern Europe that attach importance to the construction of family welfare system and thus promote the improvement of fertility level have shown this point.

It can be seen that after the completion of the demographic transition, the population changes in China have fluctuated. The tension between population and development has been eased, and the long-term low fertility rate urgently requires rethinking China's population policy. The population policy needs to be changed from a regulatory population policy to an adaptive population policy that is more suitable for the population process and population dynamics in the post-population transition period, so as to build a fertility-friendly social mechanism. Therefore, the population policy can also ensure the health and happy family life of the population, become a social system to meet the population demand and improve the welfare of the population, and promote the coordination between population and development in a macro way.

The writer is a professor and doctoral supervisor at the Institute of Population Studies, Fudan University. This paper is the author's speech at the Seminar on Population and Social Sustainable Development of Xi Jiaotong University on October 28th, 20 18/KLOC-0.

(Article source: Lujiazui Magazine)