ABSTRACT
Chapter 8 focuses on the fertility levels of the migrant population. Migrant population has increased enormously since the implementation of the Reform and Opening-Up policy. There are two conflicting views on the fertility level among the migrant population. One holds that the migrant population evades administrative control of the family planning policy and underreports births. As a result, their actual fertility level is high. And the opposing view suggests that the migrant population is better educated and that the reason for migration is to pursue better economic return and a new lifestyle and, consequently, they postpone marriage and childbearing, resulting in a low fertility level. Our results confirm the latter view. Despite possible underreporting of childbirths among the migrant population, their overall fertility is much lower than that of the non-migrant population, and population migration is in fact an important factor for the drop in the fertility level.
