The Impact of Education-Job Matching on Fertility Intention of Young Adults

Lu Jiehua & Sun Yang

Published in Chinese Journal of Population Science, 2024, Issue 3.

Abstract: Education-job matching has important impacts on individuals' work and life. This article examines the effect of overeducation on fertility intention of young adults using the 2018 CFPS data, by incorporating income and psychological factors into a comprehensive framework with multiple mediation mechanisms. We find that overeducation significantly negatively affects fertility intention, which holds robust in a series of tests. The heterogeneity analysis shows that overeducation has more salient suppressing effects on the fertility intention of women, those living in western region or in rural areas, and people born in the 1980s. Compared with the state of education-work adaptation, although the wage punishment of overeducation reduces the opportunity cost, the opportunity cost effect of restraining childbearing still exists significantly. What's more, overeducation has multifaceted inhibition effects on fertility intention from the psychological mechanisms through the disappointment effect of education and the income disappointment effect caused by salary punishment, which makes the young adults' low fertility intention changing gradually from a passive choice to an initiative one. This study concludes with a policy suggestion on the population strategy to fully consider the connection between education and labour market. And it is important to construct a unified national labor market, reform our education system, create a fertility-friendly and gender-equal environment covering the entire life cycle, and promote the complementarity of education, work and family.

Keywords: overeducation, fertility Intention, income, life expectation, fertility support