Fertility Decline via Marital Postponement in China

Planned reproduction in the Peoples Republic of China encompasses both marital postponement and fertility limitation within marriage. Marital postponement has long-run potential because it can serve to eliminate 1 or 2 generations within an extended period of about 1 century. Little documentation exists on the extent to which Chinas youth has followed repeated exhortations to delay matrimony. The data presented are probably the 1st of their kind available anywhere and were obtained first hand by opportunity sample. There were indications that marriage during adolescence has disappeared. The median age at the birth of 1st child for current age group 25-29 (1973) was 27.0 for men and 24.0 for women compared were 23.5 for men in age group 40-44 and 20.0 for women in the same age group. In other words those whose most impressionable years were spent in the new society exhibited a radically different pattern of parenthood. It is thought that efficient use of contraception played a minor role in these changes.