ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Health Policy
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1612141
This article is part of the Research TopicIntegrating Economics into Population Health: Assessing Policies and OutcomesView all 12 articles
Effect of "universal two-child" policy on population changes in Shandong province, China: an interrupted time series analysis
Provisionally accepted
- 1College of Public Health, Shandong Second Medical University, Weifang, China
- 2Department of Histology and Embryology, College of Basic Medical Sciences, Shandong Second Medical University, Weifang, Shandong 261053, China, Weifang, China
- 3College of Clinical Medical Sciences, Shandong Second Medical University, Weifang, Shandong 261053, China, Weifang, China
- 4Department of Epidemiology, Shandong Second Medical University, Weifang, Shandong 261053, China, Weifang, China
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As population ageing intensifies and women’s fertility levels decline continuously, the improvement of fertility policies has emerged as a pivotal concern for most governments. The study aimed to evaluate the effect of the “universal two-child” policy implementation on the birth population trend. A quasi-experimental interrupted time series (ITS) study was conducted to analyze the collected data. The data on the birth population of Shandong province from 2000 to 2022 were collected to observe trend changes in the pre- and post-intervention. The results showed that the birth rate increased immediately in the first year after the intervention (P < 0.001), but the trend significantly declined in the following years (P < 0.001).After further adjustment for the influence of the pre-fertility policies, urbanization rate, and per capita disposable income, the birth population level still showed a downward trend year by year in the post-intervention (P < 0.001). The policy implementation helped to boost the population growth in the short term, but the long-term effect of the policy was not optimistic. More targeted incentive strategies should be considered to reverse the continuous decline in fertility rates.
Keywords: Interrupted Time Series, the -universal two-child‖ policy, fertility rates, Births, Segmented regression analysis
Received: 15 Apr 2025; Accepted: 11 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Shi, Cui, Chen, Zhang, Wang, Cao, Gao and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Hang Gao, College of Clinical Medical Sciences, Shandong Second Medical University, Weifang, Shandong 261053, China, Weifang, China
Qiang Wang, Department of Epidemiology, Shandong Second Medical University, Weifang, Shandong 261053, China, Weifang, China
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