From familial obligations toward individual choice? Embodied cultural capital and fertility beliefs in contemporary China

In contemporary Chinese society, embodied cultural capital plays a crucial role in the detraditionalization of fertility beliefs. However, empirical evidence on this association remains limited, and the attitudinal pathways linking cultural resources to fertility beliefs have not been sufficiently clarified. This study examines how embodied cultural capital relates to traditional fertility beliefs among Chinese adults, with particular attention to gender role attitudes and pursuit of marriage as two related attitudinal pathways.

Using data from the nationally representative 2021 China General Social Survey, this study applies linear regression models to assess the association between embodied cultural capital and traditional fertility beliefs. Interaction models are used to explore group heterogeneity, and stepwise regression is applied to examine the two attitudinal pathways. The findings reveal that embodied cultural capital significantly reduces adherence to traditional fertility beliefs among the Chinese people, and significant differences in this effect were observed across groups.

Specifically, this weakening effect was less pronounced among married and male individuals. Furthermore, embodied cultural capital indirectly weakens adherence to traditional fertility beliefs through two primary mechanisms: enhancing egalitarian gender role attitudes and strengthening a personal-happiness-oriented pursuit of marriage. These results suggest that embodied cultural capital impacts fertility beliefs through both direct and indirect pathways, with the latter primarily mediated by gender role attitudes and the pursuit of marriage as key subjective mechanisms.

We thank the Chinese General Social Survey for their excellent work in database design and data collection and for allowing free access to the data. We also gratefully acknowledge the generous financial support provided by the National Social Science Fund of China through the General Project “Marriage Intentions among Generation Z in Contemporary China (Grant No. 24BSH088)”. College of International Education and Social Development, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, China School of Philosophy and Social Development, Shandong University, Jinan, China The authors declare no competing interests.

This study used de-identified, publicly available secondary data from the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS), accessed through the official CGSS website (http://cgss.ruc.edu.cn/). The original survey was conducted in accordance with the ethical principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. Ethical approval and informed consent procedures for the original data collection were overseen by the Ethics Committees of Renmin University of China and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

The present study involved no recruitment of participants, direct interaction with human participants, or collection of new primary data. As the analysis was conducted using anonymized archival data, additional ethical approval was not required for the present study. Informed consent for participation in the original CGSS survey was addressed as part of the original data-collection procedures.