You're skating on very thin ice, Sleepystudent.
China demographics thread.
- Thread starter gadgetcool5
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America doesn't have zero culture of filial piety, just white Americans. You'll find that cultures with that concept in America. Blacks and hispanics have much higher birth rates. The white non hispanic birth rate is as low as European levels.
LOL @ trying to spin a slightly higher American birthrate into a positive. That's impressive, even for you sleepy.
China population: forget two or three kids, getting couples to have the first one is ‘most pressing problem’, advisers say
- With almost 100 million people, Henan province saw just 920,000 births last year – almost a quarter less than in 2019
Beijing has been pushing couples to have multiple children, but policy advisers warn that more must be done to reduce the cost of childbearing and parenting
With one of China’s most populous provinces saying its birth rate has plunged to a more than four-decade low, Beijing’s policy advisers are warning against the potential pitfalls of not doing enough to encourage couples to have a first child.
Henan province, the country’s third-most-populous administrative region, with 99.36 million people, has reported that its number of newborns fell to 920,000 last year – a 23.3 per cent decline from 2019 – as the birth rate dropped to 9.24 births per 1,000 people.
The birth rate and total births were at their lowest points on record – since data was first made available in 1978, according to the province’s latest statistical yearbook.
The official regional readings offer fresh insight into the dwindling population growth and increasingly ageing society of the world’s second-largest economy, where births fell by 18 per cent in 2020 , marking a near six-decade low.
Experts have warned that a demographic turning point may be just around the corner in the world’s most populous nation, and some say it threatens to erode the foundation of China’s booming economic growth over the past 40 years while heaping pressure on Beijing’s inward-facing consumption strategy, .
Beijing has already taken steps to curb the trend, such as by and by for “non-medical” purposes.
Dozens of provincial and municipal authorities have also introduced their own initiatives to bump up fertility. These include giving parents more days off work, or even financial support, for having a second or third child. But such moves have been met with scepticism.
“There is such a misunderstanding about the fertility support policies in various regions, with too much focus on having a second and third child. But our most pressing problem now is that there are so few first children,” said Li Wei, director of the Population, Resources and Environment Committee, which operates under the national committee of the nation’s top advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).
“[We] must have a clear understanding of the situation and make correct policy guidance,” he said, speaking at a CPPCC seminar on birth-support policies in mid-November, according to a meeting transcript released on December 31.
At the same event, He Dan, another member of the CPPCC national committee and director of the China Population and Development Research Centre, echoed Li’s sentiment, arguing that getting married and having kids was no longer a priority for younger generations, and that the costs associated with having just one child are significant enough to determine whether parents decide to have more children.
She also said that the country should avoid indiscriminately doling out childcare subsidies, as doing so could raise the fertility rate among low-income groups but would have a limited impact on improving the lifelong fertility level among Chinese women.
Yang Wenzhuang, an official with the National Health Commission, suggested at the conference that China should enhance its nursery and childcare services. He noted that China currently has about 40 million children under three years old – a sharp decline from the official figure of more than 47 million that was released in late 2020.
China is set to publish its annual population data for 2021 on January 17 when authorities release the gross domestic product figures for the fourth quarter of 2021 and for the full year.
The number of newborns for all of last year is expected to have fallen to about 10 million, and the nation’s total population is likely to start shrinking in the foreseeable future, according to a report published last month by the new YuWa Population Research think tank, which was established by some of the nation’s leading advocates for lifting birth restrictions.
Back in Henan, official statistics pertaining to disease screenings among newborns showed an 18.8 per cent decline in the number of newborns during the first nine months of last year.
“Many people do not regard having children as a way of contributing to … the development of society, but it does play this role,” said Du Gang, an official with the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security. “So, the government must bear the corresponding responsibility of … reducing the cost of childbearing and parenting as much as we can.”
Non paywall
They will publish the birth figures for 2021 on 17 January. Horrible. Nightmarish.
Local Governments Set Price Limits on After-School Tutoring
Authorities in several Chinese cities have set government-guided pricing standards for curriculum-based after-school tutoring, as part of the industry’s transition to nonprofit status by the year-end deadline last Friday.
The government pricing guide set benchmark prices from 40 yuan to 80 yuan per class in megacities Beijing and Shanghai, with a price range to cater for different class sizes. After-school tutoring institutions can use the pricing standards to set their fees, with prices capped at 10% over the benchmark.
Other cities such as Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Nanjing and Qingdao have set lower benchmark prices, while some cities in South China’s Hainan province have the benchmark prices capped as low as 7 yuan per class.
Following the central government’s issued in July, after-school institutions were required to register as nonprofit entities before and local governments were ordered to issue their pricing guide. The “double reduction” refers to the reducing of burden on students from homework and after-school tutoring.
In November, Beijing issued a draft document unveiling its plan for a that sets benchmark and floating fees.
In Beijing and Shanghai, the benchmark price for offline classes with 10 to 35 students have been set at 60 yuan, while the prices for classes with smaller and bigger sizes are set at 80 yuan and 40 yuan, respectively.
Guangzhou, the capital city of South China’s Guangdong province, and tech hub Shenzhen have set the price range at 35 yuan to 70 yuan, while cities like Nanjing and Qingdao have set the price range at 15 yuan to 60 yuan.
Some cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou have also set online class benchmark fees at 20 yuan for a standard 30-minute tutoring.
Such government-guided pricing standards are much lower than previous class fees set by after-school tutoring institutions, who could charge hundreds to thousands of yuan for.
Xiong Bingqi, president of the Beijing-based 21st Century Education Research Institute, wrote in an article noting that such pricing standards can make it tough for the institutions to operate. He acknowledged, however, that standards are a requirement for the after-school tutoring institutions’ transition to nonprofits.
Xiong suggested that the institutions should be given support from governments, in the form of appropriate financial subsidies and tax reductions. Meanwhile, public schools could also cooperate with the non-profit tutoring institutions, by procuring their services to help provide diverse supplementary support for students, Xiong noted.
Non paywall
Only the rich and upper middle class are capable of taking care of the elders in China, or elders who previously served in the military (I mean officers, not even NCOs) or high-ranking governmental positions are eligible for sufficient healthcare and retirement benefits. In other words, China's retirement system is capable of providing for former government officials and military officers right now. Therefore, men now nowadays are expected to take care of both their parents and their wives' parents. It is one of the reasons why women in China nowadays demand such high dowries for marriage. China has universal healthcare and elders care on surface, but when people really get sick, only the cheapest domestically made medicines (or vintage medical equipment from the 90s and 80s) are covered by the current public healthcares.
antiterror13
Brigadier
Where is india and Indonesia ? Also I don't see Israel
Incentives alone aint gonna work.
Incentives failed in Japan, its failing in Taiwan, its failing in SK and they offer bigger and broader incentives than China.
Incentives have to be supplemented with Coercion. Initiate regressive taxation based on family size, restricting certain amenities etc.
Also CPC boasts of having 90 million members. How about link promotion, pay with no. of children.
China doesn't have the luxury of testing only incentives for long at this stage because as the population ages, fewer and fewer couples will be of childbearing age, and a higher fertility rate will deliver less bang for the buck.
Incentives failed in Japan, its failing in Taiwan, its failing in SK and they offer bigger and broader incentives than China.
Incentives have to be supplemented with Coercion. Initiate regressive taxation based on family size, restricting certain amenities etc.
Also CPC boasts of having 90 million members. How about link promotion, pay with no. of children.
China doesn't have the luxury of testing only incentives for long at this stage because as the population ages, fewer and fewer couples will be of childbearing age, and a higher fertility rate will deliver less bang for the buck.
Should be comprehensively lowering costs. (Housing, childcare, education etc)
Comprehensive legal protections for women's career during pregnancy and child raising. Not just words, actual enforcement so that employers stop breaking the law
Cultural change. Focus on having more children. Film, radio, internet etc should focus on "more children = happier"
Social-peer pressure. Create such a environment where people with no children would feel pressured from their friends/family/strangers/co-workers etc to have children
Incentives on taxes, on priority for house loans, lower interest rates, better access to schools, more promotion opportunities in SOEs and government officials, more pension (more workers = more support for pensioners in a macro level).
Could also be linked with retirement age. Raise retirement age for everyone (long overdue), except for people with 1 child or more.
Housing, Education, Childcare etc are just bunch of shoddy explanations that sociologists try to come up with because they're looking for a rational explanation to falling birth rates. Issue is more ideological.
Nordic Countries like Finland (1.3), Norway (1.5) , Denmark (1.7) are seeing birth rates fall for over a decade now.
These countries have the cheapest housing, free healthcare, free education, high per capita income (51k>) , tops the happiness index, cleanest environment , most liberal policies for women wrt maternity leave, benefits etc.
Yet despite all this their BR is falling. So what explains this phenomenon?
Acc to me people just don't consider giving birth a social, biological necessity as before and want to live a life without hassles of raising a child. The very idea/necessity behind giving birth and establishing a family is being challenged.
Nordic Countries like Finland (1.3), Norway (1.5) , Denmark (1.7) are seeing birth rates fall for over a decade now.
These countries have the cheapest housing, free healthcare, free education, high per capita income (51k>) , tops the happiness index, cleanest environment , most liberal policies for women wrt maternity leave, benefits etc.
Yet despite all this their BR is falling. So what explains this phenomenon?
Acc to me people just don't consider giving birth a social, biological necessity as before and want to live a life without hassles of raising a child. The very idea/necessity behind giving birth and establishing a family is being challenged.
One possible solution: after you finish school or become of legal age, your tax rate is zero. Every following year, your tax rate increases by several percent. Until a certain point where it stops increasing. Let's say around your 35 years, when it tops out at some huge tax rate. It doesn't matter if if it's 40% or 60% or whatever the number is. But if you are a biological parent to one child - that tax rate then drops by quite a bit. If you're a biological parent to another child, it drops even more. If you're a parent to a third child - then it drops by a little bit further. 4th child and onward do not yield tax cuts. Ideally, a parent with two children pays just half the tax, or even less, than a person without children. So if someone earns $50 000 a year, is 35 years old and has zero children - that person will be left with, say, $25 000 per year. If the same person has two kids they'll have $37 000 left each year, after tax. After 20 years, if the salary remains the same, that amounts to $240 000 extra.
The whole idea is to give the person enough money to reimburse the costs of raising those two kids and then some (for their free time and stress) and at the same time to give the state more tax payers/producers/consumers.
Even if a kid that grows into a taxpayer doesn't produce anything tangible for the state (lets say the person makes virtual goods which then they export abroad) they will still, over a 50 year period of emplyment be paying the state (assuming they too have 2 kids) $580 000 in income tax plus $200 000 in sales tax (if all of their salary is spent and VAT remains 13%) PLUS their spending/consumerism will help someone else living in the country.
So, in reality, the taxes stated in the first paragraph, as well as the tax breaks - could be made even more pronounced. There's more than room for it. So the person having two kids gets even more than $240 000 back. And let's remember that most people have a spouse, which is sharing the financial burden of having kids. So if that person also gets the same money back, that couple would get half a million dollars back from the state for two kids, after 20 years.
Of course, while this might work on a blank slate system - good luck trying to implement anything like it to an already existing tax/finance system, especially one so large and complex and chinese one. Ripping the finances out and hoping to god you've managed to balance the numbers just right so the state doesn't go bankrupt within a few years (if you didn't tax enough) or that you don't have a population revolt on your hands (if it turns out you taxed too much).
The whole idea is to give the person enough money to reimburse the costs of raising those two kids and then some (for their free time and stress) and at the same time to give the state more tax payers/producers/consumers.
Even if a kid that grows into a taxpayer doesn't produce anything tangible for the state (lets say the person makes virtual goods which then they export abroad) they will still, over a 50 year period of emplyment be paying the state (assuming they too have 2 kids) $580 000 in income tax plus $200 000 in sales tax (if all of their salary is spent and VAT remains 13%) PLUS their spending/consumerism will help someone else living in the country.
So, in reality, the taxes stated in the first paragraph, as well as the tax breaks - could be made even more pronounced. There's more than room for it. So the person having two kids gets even more than $240 000 back. And let's remember that most people have a spouse, which is sharing the financial burden of having kids. So if that person also gets the same money back, that couple would get half a million dollars back from the state for two kids, after 20 years.
Of course, while this might work on a blank slate system - good luck trying to implement anything like it to an already existing tax/finance system, especially one so large and complex and chinese one. Ripping the finances out and hoping to god you've managed to balance the numbers just right so the state doesn't go bankrupt within a few years (if you didn't tax enough) or that you don't have a population revolt on your hands (if it turns out you taxed too much).
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