Objective  To examine fertility intention and its associates under the “two-child policy” and to explore possible causes of ultra-low fertility rate among urban residents in Liaoning province to provide references for developing relevant policies on fertility encouragement.

  Methods   The data on 618 Liaoning province urban residents aged 18 – 49 years were extracted from three waves of Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) conducted in 2013, 2015, and 2017. Stata14.0 software was used in general demographic descriptive statistical analysis and Poisson regression analysis on fertility intention and its influencing factors before and after the implementation of “two-child policy” in 2017.

  Results   For all the residents surveyed, the reported ideal number of children was 1.71 and that of gender preference was 0.84 for boy and 0.89 for girl. Of the residents, 57.0% considered two children being the ideal number for their families. The higher ideal numbers of children reported by subgroup residents were 1.79 for 26 – 33 years old residents, 1.81 for the residents with the education of college and above, and 1.80 for the residents with personal annual income of 40 000 RMB yuan and more, respectively. The significant influencing factors for fertility intention included age, gender, education, marriage status, endowment insurance, occupation, pension concept, and attitude towards child bearing (P < 0.05 for all). Time effect analysis showed that the fertility intention of the residents was significantly higher (EXPβ = 1.067) in 2017compared with that in 2013.

  Conclusion   The two-child policy, especially the comprehensive two-child policy, has promoted the fertility intention of 18 – 49 years old urban residents in Liaoning province to a certain extent, but the fertility intention is affected by multiple individual and social factors. The results suggest that targeted strategies need to be developed to encourage fertility intention of the residents.