The Fertility Impact of Temporary Migration in China: A Detachment Hypothesis

This paper expands themigration-fertility linkage literature by examiningthe fertility impact of temporary migration inHubei, China. The central hypothesis is thattemporary migration affects migrants' fertilitythrough a detachment process: The separation oftemporary migrants' actual residence from their de jure residence creates a loophole in family planningadministration, weakening the social control overtheir fertility. The analysis of annualorder-specific births since 1979 suggests thattemporary migrants exhibit significantly higherprobabilities of having a second birth thanpermanent migrants and non-migrants once type ofresidence is controlled for; rural-rural temporarymigrants have the highest fertility among all groupsexamined. The results lend support to the detachmenthypothesis while indicating a strong anti-natalimpact of urban residence. Rural-urban temporarymigrants are not the ones to blame for increases inout-planning births in contemporary China, but theirfertility would have been lower if there had been nodetachment. Rural-rural temporary migrants areactually the escapees of the one-child-per-familypolicy.