The impact of the new trend of urban‐to‐urban migration on fertility behaviors

In China, urban‐to‐urban migration is an emerging migration trend that may have different impacts on fertility behavior. Based on the China General Social Survey, this study provides an in‐depth examination of the impact of urban‐to‐urban migration on fertility behavior. The findings show that urban‐to‐urban migrants tend to adopt more conservative fertility decisions, including lowering the likelihood of having children, delaying the age of first birth, and lengthening birth intervals. Traditional catch‐up and interference hypotheses fail to account for these results, whereas findings from the selectivity hypothesis suggest that urban‐to‐urban migrants anticipate lower numbers of children and maintain more open attitudes towards sexuality, potentially contributing to the conservative fertility behaviors. In addition, the study also reveals that urban‐to‐urban migration appears to promote a more open and liberal attitude towards childbearing, particularly weakening discriminatory attitudes towards women entrenched in feudal notions. This study has not only enriched the theories of migrant fertility behavior but also offered a new perspective on the recent changes in China's fertility rate.