Research on Fertility Policy in China: The Relative Necessity for Reform Among the Different Provinces

The one-child fertility policy introduced in the 1970s to control the population in China, has changed the population structure in the preceding decades. As one of the significant effects, such problems as population ageing become more serious nowadays, bringing the active reforms of the fertility policy. Because of the regional diversity, every province has its own unique necessity for reform of fertility policy in China. In order to understand the provincial differences about the reform necessity, we build original formulas to quantity the reform necessity, and then utilize the k-means cluster method to divide 31 Chinese provinces into four categories. The results show that serious regional disparities indeed exist among provinces, some of which such as Shanghai and Beijing are urgent to reform fertility policy now, but some of which such as Guangxi are just opposite. Meanwhile, neighboring provinces are always clustered into the same category, indicating that the space aggregation is obvious. Besides the geographic element, such factors as economy also lead to the aggregation effect. Furthermore, most provinces have similar classification results under two different circumstances: combining all various indicators and considering only demographic indicators, presenting the coordinate development among population, economy and society in China. However, sixty percent of all provinces in China can’t clearly understand their necessities for reform of fertility policy through a straightforward diagnosis. Therefore, some target measures are proposed as important suggestions for tracking fertility policy.