Abstract: Based on CGSS data from 2012 to 2017, this paper studies the mechanism of higher education on female reproductive level. The results show that women receiving higher education can significantly inhibit their fertility level, which increases with the increase of educational level and decreases with the increase of age. At the same time, there are differences in the nature of work, household registration type and regional differences. Mechanism analysis shows that higher education also reduces women's fertility through opportunity cost effect and gender identity effect. And the former is far greater than the latter, indicating that the low fertility level of highly educated women is mainly due to the passive choice of higher opportunity cost. In this regard, we should start from developing child care services, guiding enterprises to improve related systems, appealing to men to participate in family labor and so on to encourage women to raise their fertility level.

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