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Download PDF<br>Research Article<br>The Rise of Zero Fertility Desire in China

Xiangning Xu

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https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-8921502/v1<br>This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License

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Abstract

Rising childlessness across low-fertility societies has commonly been interpreted as the result of unrealized fertility intentions rather than the rejection of parenthood itself. However, the emergence of zero fertility desire raises the possibility that declining fertility desire may play an increasingly important role alongside unmet fertility in shaping contemporary fertility outcomes. Using China as an empirical case, this paper examines zero fertility desire among individuals aged 18–24. Drawing on six waves of the China General Social Survey (2012–2023), the share reporting no desire for children increased from approximately 5% in 2012 to 32% in 2023, accompanied by a pronounced gender gap: by 2023, nearly half of young women reported zero fertility desire. Logistic regression results show gender to be the most consistent predictor, more so than education and hukou status. Among young women, urban–rural differences are not statistically significant, while college-educated women exhibit higher odds of reporting zero fertility desire than their non-college educated peers. These findings suggest that declining fertility desire may increasingly contribute to rising childlessness and highlight potential limits of pronatalist policies that primarily target constraints on fertility intentions.

Fertility Desire

Childlessness

Gender

Culture

Figures

Figure 1

Introduction

Childlessness has risen steadily across many high-income societies in Western Europe (Bloom and Pebley 1982; Kreyenfeld 2017) and East Asia (Abe 2022; Sobotka 2021), contributing to persistently low fertility. Most research attends to this trend from the perspective of delayed or unrealized childbearing (Abe 2022; Bernardi, Ryser, and Le Goff 2013; Berrington 2017) in the face of economic, institutional, and normative constraints. Yet an open question remains whether rising childlessness reflects constrained realization of fertility intentions, or a more fundamental shift away from childbearing as a desired life goal. China may represent a distinct trajectory. Recent evidence documents an unprecedented rise in zero fertility desire among college educated young adults (Blair and Madigan 2020; Xu et al. 2023; Zhang et al. 2022). Identifying the mechanisms underlying this shift is essential for explaining contemporary fertility decline and evaluating the limits of policy intervention.

Existing studies largely emphasize a growing mismatch between enduring fertility ideals and changing social conditions. In Europe, women&rsquo;s work–family compatibility and satisfaction with domestic labor arrangements are closely linked to intentions to have children, producing substantial &ldquo;unmet need for children.&rdquo;(Bernardi et al. 2013) In the United States, fertility desire remains relatively stable with only modest decline (Hartnett and Gemmill 2020), but individuals increasingly express uncertainty about whether and when they will realize their intentions(Badolato, Hayford, and Guzzo 2025). Research on East Asia similarly documents a long-standing norm of near-universal fertility desire, while highlighting how rapid socioeconomic change and persistent family norms have constrained fertility realization (Raymo et al. 2015). Taken together, this literature generally attributes low fertility and rising childlessness to structural barriers rather than to declining fertility desire itself.

In China, where underachieved fertility intentions have been similarly documented for decades (Raymo et al. 2015), it remains unclear whether this framework still applies. Evidence from recent cohorts of college-educated young adults indicates that 20–30% report no desire for children (Blair and Madigan 2020; Xu et al. 2023; Zhang et al. 2022), marking a departure from the near-universal fertility desire observed in East Asia through the early 2010s. If such attitudes are diffusing beyond elite groups, they raise important questions about the effectiveness of pronatalist policies[1] and policy recommendations (Huang et al. 2019) that focus primarily on reducing economic barriers. Examining fertility desire in China therefore provides insight into whether contemporary low fertility reflects constrained choices or an emerging reorientation of fertility culture, with implications for population policy in China and other low-fertility societies.

In this project, I examine zero fertility desire using nationally representative data from five waves of the China General Social Survey (CGSS) to better understand this zero fertility desire trend beyond college...