Development of Fertility, Social Status, and Social Trust of Farmers

Fertility, social status, and social trust are main social choice behaviors of Chinese farmers. This paper adopts the childbearing–value logic to establish a theoretical model of farmers’ childbearing–social status–social trust choices to examine the influence of farmers’ childbearing and social status on farmers’ social trust. The theoretical model showed that farmers will rationally choose the number of children to bear, emotional value, social value, economic value, social status, and social trust. The fertility of farmers’ children is actually a trade-off between quantity and value, and the fertility behavior affects social status through the direct mechanism of the number of children and the value of the adjustment mechanism, and together with the social status, through the direct mechanism, the adjustment mechanism of the number of children, the intermediate mechanism of social status, and the mixed adjustment mechanism. Asymmetry affects social trust equilibrium. Empirical research based on the CFPS (China Family Panel Studies) data in 2018 showed that farmers’ children quantity primarily inhibits, through the adjustment mechanism of children’s value–social status, social status and social trust; it exerts no direct impact or mediating effect on the social status. The economic value of children does not affect the social status, but it affects social trust through a positive child quantity adjustment mechanism, a negative social status mediation mechanism, and a negative mixed mediation mechanism. The social value of children affects social trust by the positive direct mechanism and the negative children quantity adjustment mechanism, as well as social trust by the negative direct mechanism, children quantity adjustment mechanism, children quantity–social status mixed adjustment mediating mechanism, and the positive social status–mediated mechanism. The emotional value of children affects the social status through the positive direct mechanism, as well as social trust through the positive direct mechanism, social status–mediated mechanism, and negative child quantity adjustment mechanism, and negative mixed mediation mechanism. Furthermore, social status positively impacts social trust rather than a symmetric transmission of the mediating effect of children’s value and the quantity adjustment effect of children’s value. However, no mediating effect of social trust was observed on children quantity. Social development leads to structural changes in the fertility value of farmers’ children, which makes farmers prefer their children’s social and economic value, exerting a complex impact on their own social status and social trust.