The study examines a hypothesis explaining the historical impact of socialist agricultural institutions on Chinese rural fertility. The implementation of collective agricultural management and socialization of traditional family relations under various types of socialist rural institutions are shown to have affected Chinese peasants' fertility by changing the “intergenerational wealth flows” situation. To take into account the extraneous effects of economic conditions and family planning policy on rural fertility, statistical models are constructed which compute residual fertility fluctuations unexplained by these factors. By comparing the unexplained fluctuations of rural fertility with institutional changes that in varying degrees weakened the traditional sociopolitical and economic functions of family, we assess our hypothesis on the relation between macro institutional changes and fertility behavior of rural families.
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