According to the recent study of economics, it is easy to conclude that policies, including childcare cost, family income, child-relate leave and government subsidies for family with kids, have an inevitable impact on fertility. For instance, if a female can take less time on work, and spend that time to be as a mother in a family, the fertility rate will increase. Because they will have as much time as they want to take care of their children, and pay more attention to better care. At the same time, the cost of childcare will decrease since mothers have enough time to do it by themselves. Hence, the decision of having children is reasonable. On the other hand, although plenty of scholars accepted the economic model for the past decades, five main points in the model needs a critical analysis.
Firstly, the rise of income could have an impact, but not a significant one due to the consideration of childcare quality. Parents usually want to provide a higher life quality, if they have the ability, since their child was a baby. For example, the Chinese parents always want to send children to the top 10 universities around the world, even if they have to pay for the giant amount of tuition fees, which may be tenfold fees of a local university. Consequently, they will not have enough money to raise another kid.
Secondly, the lack of information about the cost to have a child has both positive and negative impact on fertility. It is hard to evaluate the total cost before people have that child since the price of commodities and preference of parents change fast. As a result, the estimated cost will be understated or overstated, and the influence on fertility is positive or negative respectively.
Thirdly, the variation on life plan for each person varies fertility as well. People need a long-term plan for the whole life, but it will be changed by lots of short-term goals. Otherwise, it is the same, as individuals have to do the determination of marrying or divorcing...