China’s fertility rate has been in continuous decline since 2013, despite policy shifts such as the relaxation of the one-child policy in 2015. The government is implementing a mix of family and work policies to support family formation, but little evidence exists on how Chinese women might respond. We conducted a single-profile discrete choice experiment (DCE) on a randomly selected sample of married women aged 21–49 from 31 provinces in mainland China. Participants were assigned hypothetical scenarios with varying levels of parental leave, childcare support, monetary incentives, and impacts on career progression. All policy attributes were significantly associated with intention to have a second child (p<0.001), with career progression having the largest effect. Compared to a two-year delay on promotions, leaving promotion prospects intact was associated with 5.0 percentage point increase in intention to have a second child. We estimated an implicit willingness-to-pay for career progression without penalties worth 743 CNY [104 USD] per month over three years, amounting to 26,763 CNY [3723 USD] in total. Our findings highlight the critical role of career progression in shaping decisions regarding family formation, pointing towards issues of gender equity at work as important barriers to reproductive aspirations.

The authors have declared no competing interest.

This study was funded by UCL-PKU Strategic Fund

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This study received approval from the UCL Research Ethics Committee (ANONYMISED FOR REVIEW) and Peking University Third Hospital Medical Science Research Ethics Committee (ANONYMISED FOR REVIEW).

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