China's urban fertility rate continues to decline. Reducing the costs associated with childbearing, childrearing, and educating children has become a core issue in population policy. The nine-year compulsory education stage, comprising primary and junior high school, constitutes a fundamental component of basic education. During this stage, families generally seek to ensure that their children can access relatively high-quality education to avoid falling behind at the starting point of schooling. However, the policy of “enrollment by school district and proximity-based admission” limits children's school options based on their residential location. Consequently, the spatial distribution of high-quality compulsory education schools within cities may directly influence households' education-related costs in areas such as housing, commuting, and extracurricular tutoring, thereby affecting fertility intentions. This study aims to empirically test these mechanisms and propose feasible approaches to enhance urban residents' fertility intentions.

Based on school rankings from multiple educational consulting platforms, this study constructs an index capturing the within-city spatial equity of high-quality compulsory education resources for a sample of 35 major Chinese cities. This index is subsequently merged with data from the 2017 China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) to empirically assess its impact on urban residents' fertility intentions. The results show that a one-standard-deviation increase in the spatial equity index is associated with an approximately 5.4% higher level of fertility intentions. This finding remains robust across multiple sensitivity checks, including replacing the measurements of key variables and conducting random sampling regressions. Further mechanism analysis indicates that, for households with children aged 4 to 15, a one-standard-deviation increase in the equity index is associated with a decrease of about 20.7% and 12.8% in the unit price and market value of their houses, respectively. Simultaneously, the probability of respondents facing a heavier commuting burden decreases by approximately 2.4%, and the proportion of those whose heavier commuting burden is attributable to their children's education drops by about 6.5%. In addition, for households with children aged 7 to 15, expenditures on extracurricular tutoring decrease by around 4.8%.

Previous studies examine the relationship between residents' fertility intentions and their children's education primarily from the perspective of education costs or parents' educational preferences. This study investigates this relationship from the supply side. By focusing on the influence of spatial distribution of high-quality compulsory education resources on fertility intentions, this study provides empirical evidence for understanding the underlying link between fertility-supportive policies and educational development strategies.

The findings have three key policy implications. First, the spatial equity of high-quality compulsory education resources within cities should be enhanced. Second, measures such as improving school district management systems, optimizing transportation infrastructure and school bus services around campuses, and expanding affordable after-school programs should be implemented to reduce the additional costs families bear in housing, commuting, and extracurricular tutoring in pursuit of high-quality education. Third, education resources planning and coordination mechanisms aligned with demographic changes should be established to stabilize families' expectations regarding access to quality education.