Women’s Reported Child Counts in Four East Asian Societies: Social Correlates and Change, 2006–2018

East Asian societies have experienced profound changes in family formation, yet comparative evidence on the number of children reported by women across successive surveys remains limited. Using harmonized East Asian Social Survey data from 2006 to 2018, we examine cumulative reported child counts in China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. We describe society–wave patterns, calculate survey-weighted age-standardized means for women aged 25–49, and estimate weighted Poisson models of demographic and socioeconomic correlates. The main analytical sample includes 12,786 women, with additional family-attitude measures available in the 2006 and 2016 surveys. Reported counts generally vary with age and education: women with higher education report fewer children than those in the lowest education category, conditional on observed characteristics. In China, the pronounced difference between unweighted all-age means in 2012 and 2015 is substantially attenuated when comparisons are restricted to ages 25–49 and age-standardized. A positive China-by-later-wave contrast is sensitive to the age range examined and does not identify an effect of fertility-policy reform. These findings highlight the importance of demographic composition and social stratification for understanding cumulative family-size patterns across East Asia.