About

Yong Cai is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His areas of interest include Social Demography, Sociology of Health, Chinese Society, Comparative Historical Sociology, and Research Methodology. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 2005. Cai's work focuses on understanding social and health-related issues within Chinese society and broader comparative contexts, utilizing research methodologies pertinent to his fields of interest. He is actively involved in teaching, research, and service within the department, contributing to the academic community through his expertise in sociology and health.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Economic growth
• Economics
• Demography
• Demographic economics
• Social Science
• Development economics
• Political economy
• Socioeconomics
• Psychology
• Geography
• Law

Selected publications

• The Social and Sociological Consequences of China's One-Child Policy

  Annual Review of Sociology · 2021 · 98 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Social Science

  China'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. This review examines the policy's social consequences through its two most commonly invoked demographic concerns: elevated sex ratio and rapid population aging. We place these demographic concerns within three broad social and political contexts of the policy—gender, family, and the state—to examine its social consequences. We also discuss the sociological consequences of the policy, by reflecting on the roles of science and social scientists in public policy making.

  DOI

• Changing society, changing lives: Three decades of family change in China

  International Journal of Social Welfare · 2021 · 25 citations

  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Economic growth

  Abstract China 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. The rise in single‐generation households was most noticeable among those in the late 50 s and early 60 s, largely a result of young adults leaving for college or migrating away from home and a heightened aspiration for privacy of both generations. Based on these descriptive findings, future policy directions are discussed including policies to strengthen intergenerational solidarity, to support family caregivers, and to improve community‐based services.

  DOI

• Government policy and global fertility change: a reappraisal

  Asian Population Studies · 2020 · 13 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Development economics

  The 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. For pro-natalist policies, which are becoming more popular in recent years, we detect only short-term positive effects, and effects limited to countries where fertility has not sunk below the ultra-low level of 1.4 children per woman. Combined, these results suggest that government policies are important in global fertility change, though the policy impacts vary by geographic location, timing, and fertility level.

  DOI

Frequent coauthors

• Feng Wang

  14 shared

• Ke Shen

  Fudan University

  6 shared

• Baochang Gu

  3 shared

• Joseph D. Tucker

  2 shared

• Zhan Hu

  Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College

  1 shared

• Katherine Tierney

  1 shared

• Cedric H. Bien

  1 shared

• Martin King Whyte

  James Cook University Hospital

  1 shared

Similar researchers at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• Barry M. Popkinh-170
• Cynthia Bulikh-134
• Doug Perkinsh-115
• Paul Watkinsh-107
• Linda Adairh-106