The Impact of the “Three-Child” Policy on the Scale of Education: A Prediction of the Year 2035

Based on the population transition matrix and compensatory fertility mechanism modeling, this study predicts the changes in the scale of education at all levels from 2021 to 2035 under the “Three-child” policy. The results show the following: On the whole, the “Three-child” policy tends to slow down the population decline, increase the newly-born population through the short-term compensatory fertility model, and improve the pre-school and compulsory education scale, which is expected to increase by about 8% in 2035, compared with the “Universal Two-child” policy. From 2021 to 2035, the scale of preschool education tends to decrease, increase, and slowly decrease successively, and the scale of compulsory education tends to remain basically stable and then decrease slowly; from 2021 to 2026, the scale of upper secondary education tends to remain basically stable, and after 2026 it tends to show an inverted U-shaped curve; and higher education enrollment tends to increase annually. The Chinese government should, based on the changes in the scale of education at different levels, optimize the allocation of educational resources and promote the high-quality development of education.