Job quality and fertility intentions among Chinese migrant workers: the role of traditional fertility beliefs.

Under conditions of low fertility, the association between overall working conditions and fertility intention, and the extent to which this association is accompanied by changes in traditional fertility beliefs, remain insufficiently understood, particularly among Chinese migrant workers, a population situated at the intersection of traditional cultural norms and the modern labor market. Using Value of Children theory as the core framework, and incorporating insights from Conservation of Resources theory and social identity theory, this study examines the association between job quality and short-term fertility intention among Chinese migrant workers and explores the potential role of traditional fertility beliefs in this association. Using data on 2,119 married migrant workers of childbearing age from the 2020 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), this study constructs a composite job quality index encompassing six dimensions: wage income, job stability, work intensity, welfare protection, career development prospects, and job satisfaction, and employs a two-level mixed-effects logistic regression model for analysis. The results indicate that higher job quality is significantly associated with lower short-term fertility intention. Parity-stratified analysis reveals that this association is primarily concentrated among one-child families facing the decision of whether to have a second child and is not significant among families with two or more children. At the mechanism level, higher job quality is significantly associated with weaker endorsement of the "continuing the family lineage" belief in the full sample, whereas the association between higher job quality and weaker endorsement of the "raising children for old-age support" belief is significant only among migrant workers without male children. Furthermore, the negative association between job quality and short-term fertility intention is more pronounced among male migrant workers, whereas it is not significant among female migrant workers. By integrating Conservation of Resources theory into a Value of Children framework, this study provides empirical evidence for understanding the associations among employment conditions, traditional fertility beliefs, and fertility intention. The findings further suggest that these associations are conditional and context-dependent rather than universally applicable.