Are temporary migrants escapees of the one‐child‐per‐family population policy: A revisit to the detachment hypothesis

Abstract Using Hubei province as a case study, this paper retests the detachment hypothesis against the three conventional hypotheses regarding migration‐fertility linkage (i.e., selectivity, disruption, and adaptation hypotheses) in explaining migrant and non‐migrant fertility differentials in China. The analysis of yearly order‐specific birth probabilities suggests that temporary migrants exhibit a significantly higher probability of having a second or higher order birth than comparable permanent migrants and non‐migrants. This higher fertility among temporary migrants occurs after migration; temporary migrants actually do not differ from non‐migrants in fertility before migration. But permanent migrants experience no significant change in their fertility after migration. The results lend a strong support to the detachment hypothesis, which best explains the fertility differentials between migrant and non‐migrant populations in contemporary China; the separation of temporary migrants’ actual residence from their official one does lead to a greater likelihood among temporary migrants to have unplanned births.