二十一世纪以来，我国的人口局势正在发生深刻而显著的变化。当前，我国已经步入老龄化社会，且新生人口增速不断下降，总和生育率也显著低于更替水平。老龄化和低生育率两大问题为我国新时期的经济发展带来了新的挑战；对此，提高人口生育率、释放生育潜能是解决这些问题的关键抓手。目前我国已采取了放开三胎、对三胎家庭提供税收优惠等政策，但低生育率的问题仍尚未得到解决。与此同时，宠物饲养及其相关经济业态在我国蓬勃发展，带来了大量产业机会。在此情况下，青年人热衷养宠物而对婚育缺乏兴趣一度成为热点话题。然而，这一话题虽然在社会上有较高热度，但目前仍未有学术研究探讨宠物饲养与生育决策之间的关系。 针对这些现状，本研究从经济学视角切入，承袭行为经济学和家庭经济学的研究方法，探究宠物饲养与生育决策之间的关联，以期得到具有针对性和实用性的政策建议。本研究首先通过建立消费者效用最大化模型，从微观视角探究宠物饲养对生育决策的影响，并通过尝试不同的效用函数形式、引入人力资本等方法提高结果的实用性；随后通过问卷调查获取了覆盖全国共772个样本数据，并利用Stata进行实证分析，对理论模型的结果进行验证。 理论研究发现，饲养宠物对生育后代的决策具有激励作用，且这一作用会随着宠物与后代在消费者效用函数中互补性的上升而进一步增强；改变效用函数形式并引入人力资本后结果显示，该激励作用的规模与消费者对后代的偏好程度、饲养宠物付出成本正相关；当宠物对后代的人力资本积累具有较积极作用时，激励作用更加显著。 实证研究的结果与理论模型基本一致。在控制其他变量后，生育决策与饲养宠物之间具有显著的正向关联，但这一关联在未婚人群中不显著；加入人口学变量和受访者对宠物态度的主观测量变量作为交互项后，该关联依然显著、稳健。收入水平和年龄均为显著交互项，但基本不会改变主效应；受访者对宠物态度的主观测量变量加入交互项后显著性程度较低。然而，宠物饲养与理想后代数量之间没有显著联系。经过检验，实证分析的结果是稳健的。 基于以上结论，本研究提出了针对性的政策建议，如加强宠物饲养规范引导、加强对宠物经济产业的扶持力度，把握新的经济增长着力点等。
China's population situation is undergoing profound changes since the beginning of the 21st century, which can be reflected from the fact that China has entered an aging society, experienced significantly decline of the growth rate of newborn population, and the total fertility rate is going significantly below the international replacement level (2.1). Aging and low fertility have brought new challenges to China's economic development. Therefore, raising fertility rate and releasing fertility potential is the key to solve these problems. At present, China has adopted policies such as allowing three children and providing tax incentives to families with three children, but the problem of low fertility has not been solved yet. At the same time, pet raising and its related economic forms are booming in China, bringing a large number of industrial opportunities. Under such circumstances, young people's enthusiasm for pet raising and lack of interest in marriage and breeding have once become a hot topic. Despite the heat of this topic in society, however, there is no academic research exploring the relationship between pet owning and fertility decision. In view of these situations, this study starts from the perspective of economics, inherits the research methods of behavioral economics and family economics, and explores the relationship between pet ownership and reproductive decision-making, in order to get targeted and practical policy suggestions. This study first explored the impact of pet ownership on reproductive decision-making from a micro perspective by establishing a consumer utility maximization model, and improved the practicability of the results by trying different utility function forms and introducing human capital. Subsequently, 772 sample data covering the whole country were obtained through questionnaire survey, and Stata was used for empirical analysis to verify the results of the theoretical model. Theoretical research shows that keeping pets has an incentive effect on the decision of offspring reproduction, and this effect will be further enhanced with the increase of the complementarity between pets and offspring in the consumer utility function. After changing the form of utility function and introducing human capital, the results show that the scale of incentive effect is positively correlated with consumers' preference for offspring and the cost of keeping pets. When pets have a positive effect on human capital accumulation of offspring, the incentive effect is more significant. The results were then verified by the robustness check. The results of empirical tests are consistent with the models. Holding everything else constant, there was a significant positive association between fertility decisions and pet ownership, but this association was not significant among unmarried people. When demographic variables and subjective measures of respondents' attitudes to pets were included as interactions, the association remained significant and robust. Income level and age were significant interaction items, but the main effect was not changed. The degree of significance of the subjective measurement variable of respondents' attitude to pets was low when the interaction item was added. However, there was no significant association between pet ownership and the desired number of offspring. To extend the above findings, this study provided targeted policy suggestions, such as strengthening the standard guidance of pet raising, strengthening the support for pet economic industry, grasping the new focus of economic growth, et cetera.
