A Study of the County-Level Fertility in China Using Geographically Weighted Regression Method

Donghui Wang, Pennsylvania State University
Jingjing Wang, University of Minnesota

The fertility pattern in China exhibits great heterogeneity across space primarily for two reasons: first, the socioeconomic development displays salient regional disparities; second, the fertility policy-making and enforcement is also made on a localized basis. The heterogeneous nature of the Chinese fertility therefore suggests that research on the determinants of the fertility in China based on a single “global” model may fail to capture the intricacies and complexities of the relationships at the local level. Using the county-level geocoded 2010 population census of China, our study use Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) approaches to identify the local relationships between the county-level fertility rate and a set of socioeconomic and policy-related fertility determinants. Our study highlights some facets of the relationships that are completely hidden in a global model, and also draws attention to the areas that require special attention in the future studies of fertility in China.