A new paper by Hanming Fang and Chang Liu argues that East Asia’s extremely low fertility rates can be understood as a modern transformation of Confucian values rather than a simple rejection of tradition.

Total fertility rates in East Asia have fallen to levels without historical precedent, even though the region’s Confucian heritage long placed extraordinary emphasis on family continuity and large families. The authors call this the “Confucian Fertility Paradox,” and argue that it disappears once the tradition is separated into two distinct strands that modernization affected in very different ways.

The first strand is pro-natal and is built on lineage continuity, ancestor worship, and reliance on sons for support in old age. According to the paper, this strand was gradually weakened as child mortality declined, incomes rose, women entered the labor force, and state pensions replaced the family as the main source of security in old age.

What remained, the authors say, was the second strand: the veneration of education and of status earned through examination success, rooted in the imperial examination tradition. Under modern conditions, this surviving strand changes its effect on fertility. In the historical examination system, having many sons increased the chance that one might succeed. In the modern single-ranking tournament, however, parents are rewarded for concentrating resources on one or two intensively educated children. The resulting quantity-quality tradeoff, the paper argues, turns a once pro-natal culture into a powerful engine of low fertility.

Drawing on recent empirical evidence from China and Korea, Fang and Liu say that education competition is the channel through which traditional values now suppress childbearing. They also argue that standard pro-natalist policies, such as removing birth restrictions or offering cash subsidies, do little when the underlying problem is a competitive equilibrium in parental investment. In their view, policies that target the source of the distortion, such as structural reform of educational pathways, are more promising. That makes the argument relevant beyond the region’s headline fertility numbers, since it links demographic decline to institutions that shape family decisions well before childbearing itself.

Here is the paper by Hanming Fang and Chang Liu.

Usually I am suspicious of such explanations, as low birth rates typically apply also to families that do not face such education or career considerations. Thailand? Indians in Singapore? Ethnic minorities in China? But I pass this along nonetheless, due to the importance of the topic.

Via Glenn Mercer.

The post The Confucian fertility paradox appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.