Wang Feng
Professor of Sociology | UC Irvine
Irvine, CA, UNITED STATES
Wang Feng is a leading expert on demography, aging, and inequality - particularly in China.
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Biography
As a leading expert on demography, aging, and inequality, Wang Feng is Professor of Sociology at University of California, Irvine and Professor (invited) at Fudan University, Shanghai. He was a Nonresident Senior Fellow at Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy (2013-2016), Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution (2010-2013), Professor at Tsinghua University (2011-2013) and Invited Visiting Professor at Keio University, Japan. Dr. Wang’s research focuses on social inequality in post-socialist societies, global demographic change and consequences and migration and social reintegration in China. Dr. Wang is the author of multiple award-winning books and is a contributor to leading global media outlets. Dr. Wang’s work has been supported by various funding sources such as Pacific Rim Research Program, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation and American Council of Learned Societies. He served as the chair of the Department of Sociology at UC Irvine, and as an expert and consultant for the United Nations, World Economic Forum, World Bank, and Asian Development Bank.
Areas of Expertise (6)
China
Post-Communist Societies
Social Inequality
Social Demography
Contemporary Chinese Society
Comparative Historical Demography
Accomplishments (3)
Book Award, Asia and Asian American Section (professional)
2009 American Sociological Association
Best Book Award (professional)
2012 Japanese Population Association
Allan Sharlin Memorial Award for Best Book in Social Science History (professional)
2000 Social Science History Association
Education (3)
University of Michigan: MA, Sociology 1984
Hebei University, China: BA, Economics 1982
University of Michigan: PhD, Sociology 1987
Affiliations (3)
- Sociological Research Association : Member
- International Union for the Scientific Study of Population : Member
- Population Association of America : Member
Links (3)
Media Appearances (10)
China’s Population Declines for 3rd Straight Year
The New York Times online
2025-01-16
“For a country of 1.4 billion a half million more births is not much of a rebound at all,” Wang Feng, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine. “This is in comparison to the lowest year, in 2023 when the pandemic certainly put a pause on childbearing.” Many young Chinese people are quick to rattle off reasons not to have children: the rising cost of education, growing burdens of taking care of their aging parents and a desire to live a lifestyle known as “Double Income, No Kids.”
China steps up campaign for single people to date, marry and give birth
Financial Times online
2024-12-25
Wang Feng, an expert on Chinese demographics at the University of California, Irvine, said officials were resorting to the same “playbook of using administrative power to achieve demographic goals” that was evident during the one-child policy era, the 35 years from 1980 when families were restricted to having one child.
The End of China As a Great Power: Population Collapse | Opinion
Newsweek online
2024-12-23
China's population, reported to be 1.41 billion, will drop to 330 million by the end of the century, predicts Yi Fuxian of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This startling conclusion is included in a paper to be published in the Winter 2024 issue of the Contemporary China Review. He's not the only one concerned. "China has embarked on a road of demographic no-return," writes Wang Feng of the University of California, Irvine. … as Wang Feng points out, "No country has successfully raised fertility with government policies."
So, Are You Pregnant Yet? China’s In-Your-Face Push for More Babies.
The New York Times online
2024-10-08
Nor is it likely to, given the political backlash it would incur, said Wang Feng, a demography expert at the University of California, Irvine. Still, the government’s rhetoric about childbearing being a public responsibility showed that its overall mind-set, of trying to control women’s fertility choices, had not changed, he added. “It’s exactly the same mentality as when they implemented birth controls,” Professor Wang said. “The government is, I would say, totally oblivious of how society has moved beyond them.”
China Stops Foreign Adoptions, Ending a Complicated Chapter
The New York Times online
2024-09-06
“This is, in a way, the end of an era and the closing of one of the most shameful chapters of the three and a half decades of social engineering known as one-child policy,” said Wang Feng, a professor of sociology at the University of California at Irvine who specializes in China’s demographics. “The Chinese government created the problem and then they couldn’t deal with the financial constraints and that is why they allowed foreign adoption as a last resort.”
China Is Hiding A Population Secret, Analyst Claims
Newsweek online
2024-07-18
The United Nations on June 11 released its 28th annual report on population estimates and projections, with an estimate of 1.42 billion for China, which is even further off the mark than Beijing's numbers, according to Yi [Fuxian]. … "Dr. Yi is an early and courageous individual to criticize China's harmful birth control policies," said Feng Wang, professor and chair of the University of California, Irvine's sociology department. But Wang disputes Yi's conclusions. "Scholars in China and at the UN have analyzed these and other data. Not a single person has 'discovered' such a huge discrepancy." ... "China has had at least three censuses since the start of the millennium, and there has been no evidence that more than 100 million people are overreported in China," Wang said.
The One-Child Policy Supercharged China’s Economic Miracle. Now It’s Paying the Price.
The Wall Street Journal online
2024-07-11
When the global financial crisis hit soon after, China kept growth humming and was credited with helping to save the global economy. A few years later, China overtook Japan as the world’s No. 2 economy. But by 2013, China’s demographic dividend was largely over, according to research by Andrew Mason, an emeritus professor of economics at the University of Hawaii, and Wang Feng, a sociology professor at the University of California, Irvine. Now, slowing economic growth and demographic changes feed off each other for a gloomy outlook. “People always count on the [Chinese] government to do more to prop up the economy but the reality is that there’s not a lot the government can do,” Wang said.
China is facing a brutal reality as it desperately tries to fix its population decline problem
Business Insider online
2024-01-31
Wang Feng, a sociology professor at the University of California, Irvine, whose research areas include modern Chinese society, says that officials have known for a long time that the demographic crisis would come — albeit not as quickly as it has — and that the regime has been slow to act toward a solution. … "Young people are laughing at the government for believing that it actually can ask people what to do and what not to do," Wang said, pointing to the failure of the country's one-child policy. A solution for China's demographic crisis likely won't come through a few policy initiatives, Wang argued.
Newsletter: On our radar: ‘Dragon babies’
The New York Times online
2024-01-20
The year of the dragon, which begins next month and occurs every 12 years, has historically seen a spurt of so-called dragon babies. … Women of childbearing age in China, who are having fewer babies than their parents, if any at all, are less likely to believe in the old superstitions. “In the past there have been higher births in auspicious zodiac years,” Wang Feng, an expert on Chinese demographics at the University of California, Irvine, told The Financial Times. “But given the pessimistic economic outlook and pessimism among young people, I doubt we will see a noticeable rebound this year.”
China's population declines for the 2nd year in a row
NPR online
2024-01-21
NPR's Scott Detrow talks with Wang Feng, a professor of sociology at the University of California Irvine, about the consequences of China's population decline. [Feng said] “The accelerating decline is driven by three forces. … The most interesting parts are the next two. One is that in the last three decades, young people - men and women, especially women - are postponing and leaving marriage. And then third factor in terms of low birth rate is even for those married women and men, they are choosing either not having children or staying with only one child. So combined you have this declining birth number year after year.”
Event Appearances (3)
China’s New Demographic Reality and the Era of Immigration: the Case of Shanghai
AAS-in-Asia, Association of Asian Studies Taipei, China
2015-06-22
How Much Can We Learn about Future through Seeing History? -- Population Projections for China since 1980
Population Association of America Annual meeting San Diego
2015-05-02
What’s Behind the Shifting Labor Income Age Profiles in China?
Population Association of America Annual meeting San Diego
2015-05-01
Articles (5)
The Social and Sociological Consequences of China's One-Child Policy
Annual Review of SociologyChina's one-child policy is one of the largest and most controversial social engineering projects in human history. With the extreme restrictions it imposed on reproduction, the policy has altered China's demographic and social fabric in numerous fundamental ways in its nearly four decades (1979–2015) of existence. Its ramifications reach far beyond China's national borders and the present generation.
Changing society, changing lives: Three decades of family change in China
International Journal of Social WelfareChina has witnessed drastic family changes amidst demographic and socioeconomic transitions unprecedented in its history. Using data from three censuses and a national survey, this paper provided a descriptive documentation about the changing patterns in household size and structures from a synthetic life course perspective. By 2010, people below the age of 5 and in their late 20 s and early 60 s were more likely to live in three-generation households than in nuclear households compared with their counterparts in 1982, likely due to needs of childcare.
4 (Re)emergence of Late Marriage in Shanghai: From Collective Synchronization to Individual Choice
Wives, Husbands, and LoversSince 1950, age at first marriage has risen noticeably in both affluent OECD nations and in emergent economies throughout the world. Driving this trend are such structural changes as increasing enrollment of women in postsecond-ary education and expansion of white-collar jobs.
Government policy and global fertility change: a reappraisal
Asian Population StudiesThe role of government policy in fertility change has been a central inquiry in understanding global demographic changes in the last half century. We return to this inquiry with longitudinal data for over 150 countries from 1976 to 2013 and use fixed-effects models to address common methodological concerns. Our results reveal that while government anti-natalist policies fail to show clear effects for all countries included, they are associated with significantly lower fertility in Asia and Latin America, two regions that have seen the most rapid fertility decline.
Population aging and fiscal challenges in China
PopulationThe fiscal burden associated with population aging has become an increasingly common concern globally. Rising public spending is driven both by unprecedented population aging and by a shift in resource allocation from the family and kin to the state, accompanied by the development of modern state welfare regimes. Among the countries in the world facing the challenges of a rising fiscal burden, China, with its rapidly aging population and its large-scale welfare expansion, is a case in point.
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