Premarital Abortion in China: Cohort Trends and Educational Gradients

Mengjun Tang, China Population and development Research Center

In China, there is greater theoretical and practical significance in studying abortion by marital status. Previous studies of premarital abortion have been based on service records of clinics or surveys of unmarried youth, and little is known about the incidence of premarital abortion in the general population. This study assesses change across cohorts in the likelihood of premarital abortion and the extent to which change differs by educational attainment. Drawing on the 2017 China Fertility Survey, we apply a discrete-time, competing-risk survival analysis to a nationally representative sample of 221,990 both single and married women. The results discover that premarital pregnancies gradually mounted up with the lapse of time and birth cohort. As one of consequences on premarital pregnancy, premarital abortions also embarked on an upward trend, though their proportion to all abortions edged down slightly after 2010. Although women who have experienced premarital abortion took only up a minor share, this proportion is soaring upward in the later birth cohorts. Premarital abortion is more likely to take place and to occur earlier in the younger cohort. Overall, education plays a pivotal role in preventing the occurrence of premarital abortions, and can effectively delay the occurrence of first abortions.

Keywords: Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, Children, Adolescents, and Youth

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