Desperate for Babies, China Races to Undo an Era of Birth Limits. Is It Too Late?

[Celerity]

A number of new incentives encouraging people to have children highlight the challenges China faces in trying to boost its declining birthrate.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/26/world/asia/china-birth-rate.html

https://archive.is/Gqvos



In China, a country that limits most couples to three children, one province is making a bold pitch to try to get its citizens to procreate: have as many babies as you want, even if you are unmarried. The initiative, which came into effect this month, points to the renewed urgency of China’s efforts to spark a baby boom after its population shrank last year for the first time since a national famine in the 1960s.

Other efforts are underway — officials in several cities have urged college students to donate sperm to help spur population growth, and there are plans to expand national insurance coverage for fertility treatments, including I.V.F. But the measures have been met with a wave of public skepticism, ridicule and debate, highlighting the challenges China faces as it seeks to stave off a shrinking work force that could imperil economic growth. Many young Chinese adults, who themselves were born during China’s draconian one-child policy, are pushing back on the government’s inducements to have babies in a country that is among the most expensive in the world to raise a child.

To them, such incentives do little to address anxieties about supporting their aging parents and managing the rising costs of education, housing and health care. “The fundamental problem is not that people cannot have children, but that they cannot afford it,” said Lu Yi, a 26-year-old nurse in Sichuan, the province that recently lifted birth limits. She added that she would need to earn at least double her current monthly salary of 8,000 yuan, or about $1,200, to even consider having children.

Many countries around the world — from Japan to Russia to Sweden — have confronted the same demographic challenge, and their attempts to incentivize new babies with subsidies and other tactics have had a limited impact. But China has aged faster than other countries. The often harshly enforced one-child policy, which was aimed at slowing population growth, precipitated the steep decline in births and led to a generational shift in attitudes around family sizes.

snip


related

Researchers Say Earth Is Headed for "Jaw-Dropping" Population Decline

"It's extraordinary, we'll have to reorganize societies."

https://futurism.com/global-birth-rates-falling-precipitiously

People around the globe are having way fewer babies. By the year 2100, that might turn into a pretty big problem for humanity — rather than the relief one might expect. If they aren’t already, dozens of countries’ populations will be going into decline in this century, according to a new study published in the Lancet this week. 23 countries are expected to feel this effect intensify, with their populations dropping to half of what they are now by the year 2100.

The global population will peak at 9.7 billion around 2064, according to the new projection, and then drop off to 8.8 billion towards the end of the century. “That’s a pretty big thing; most of the world is transitioning into natural population decline,” Christopher Murray, co-author and researcher at the University of Washington, Seattle, told the BBC. “I think it’s incredibly hard to think this through and recognize how big a thing this is; it’s extraordinary, we’ll have to reorganize societies.”

The reality is that with more women receiving an education and entering the work force, combined with the wide availability of contraception, fertility rates are dropping, sometimes precipitously, around the world — a stark reversal of the baby boom following the Second World War. Countries including Spain, Portugal, and Thailand will have their populations more than halve by the end of the century — “jaw-dropping,” according to Murray.

But aren’t fewer humans better for a ravished world that’s rapidly being drained of its resources? The researchers suggest that there may be fewer babies being born, but any positive consequences for the environment would be offset by the challenges of a rapidly aging population. Much older populations “will create enormous social change,” Murray told the BBC. “Who pays tax in a massively aged world? Who pays for healthcare for the elderly? Who looks after the elderly? Will people still be able to retire from work?” “We need a soft landing,” he added.

snip

Fertility, mortality, migration, and population scenarios for 195 countries and territories from 2017 to 2100: a forecasting analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study

https://tinyurl.com/ybadb2q7

snip

Findings

The global TFR in the reference scenario was forecasted to be 1·66 (95% UI 1·33–2·08) in 2100. In the reference scenario, the global population was projected to peak in 2064 at 9·73 billion (8·84–10·9) people and decline to 8·79 billion (6·83–11·8) in 2100.

The reference projections for the five largest countries in 2100 were

India (1·09 billion [0·72–1·71],

Nigeria (791 million [594–1056]),

China (732 million [456–1499]),

the USA (336 million [248–456]),

and Pakistan (248 million [151–427]).



By 2050, 151 countries were forecasted to have a TFR lower than the replacement level

183 were forecasted to have a TFR lower than replacement by 2100.

23 countries in the reference scenario, including Japan, Thailand, and Spain, were forecasted to have population declines greater than 50% from 2017 to 2100

China's population was forecasted to decline by 48·0% (?6·1 to 68·4) by 2100.

China was forecasted to become the largest economy by 2035 but in the reference scenario, the USA was forecasted to once again become the largest economy in 2098.

Africa is by the main dystopian nightmare in terms of far too high birth-rates:

2.1 is replacement level.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/total-fertility-rate

1 Niger 6.9
2 DR Congo 5.9
3 Mali 5.9
4 Chad 5.7
5 Angola 5.5
6 Nigeria 5.4
7 Burundi 5.4
8 Burkina Faso 5.2
9 Gambia 5.2
10 Uganda 5
11 Tanzania 4.9
12 Mozambique 4.9
13 Benin 4.8
14 Guinea 4.7
15 South Sudan 4.7
16 Central African Republic 4.7
17 Cameroon 4.6
18 Ivory Coast 4.6
19 Zambia 4.6
20 Senegal 4.6
21 Mauritania 4.6

22 Afghanistan 4.5 Highest Non African

23 Guinea Bissau 4.5
24 Equatorial Guinea 4.5
25 Sudan 4.4
26 Republic of the Congo 4.4
28 Togo 4.3
29 Sierra Leone 4.3
30 Liberia 4.3
31 Sao Tome And Principe 4.3
32 Ethiopia 4.2
33 Malawi 4.2
34 Comoros 4.2
35 Madagascar 4.1
36 Eritrea 4.1
37 Rwanda 4
38 Gabon 4
41 Ghana 3.9
46 Zimbabwe 3.6
52 Kenya 3.5
53 Namibia 3.4
54 Egypt 3.3
57 Lesotho 3.1
59 Algeria 3
60 Eswatini 3
65 Botswana 2.9
73 Djibouti 2.7
79 South Africa 2.4
80 Morocco 2.4
96 Tunisia 2.2
97 Libya 2.2

The highest European nation is France, 2nd highest is Sweden. We here in Sweden have had large programmes to raise it up in the past, but both here and in France, it is non European descent Swedes and French who are raising it higher, with the amounts of non European immigrants in Sweden being a fairly new thing, only really happening in the last 20-25 years or so to any truly large degree, other than Persians and Chileans, who came here due to the US empiric CIA coup d'etats in 1953 and 1973, respectively, plus small amounts from other various post WWII US empiric wars and coups before the big ones (and I mean non European conflicts, not talking about the Balkans in the 1990's, which really impacted Sweden too) hit in the 2000s onward.

2.1 is replacement level

117 France 1.9
126 Sweden 1.8

132 China 1.7
133 United States 1.7
134 Brazil 1.7
135 United Kingdom 1.7

The lowest birth-rate nations:

178 Italy 1.3
179 Spain 1.3
180 Ukraine 1.3
181 Moldova 1.3
182 Bosnia And Herzegovina 1.3
183 Cyprus 1.3
184 Andorra 1.3
185 Macau 1.2
186 Malta 1.2
187 Hong Kong 1.1
188 Singapore 1.1
189 South Korea 1

[Fullduplexxx]

1. Having a family is expensive too many people want to be kings off of your salary

[Auggie]

3. Or kings off your children

[Fullduplexxx]

7. 👍 ..nt

[ChazII]

2. K&R n/t

[hunter]

4. Generous immigration and education policies can quickly solve this problem...

... but racism, religion, and abusive employers always stand in the way of this rational economic policy. That's true wherever you go on earth.

Parts of the U.S.A. are much more accepting of immigrants than others.

I live in a community where about 40% of the schoolchildren don't speak English at home. That's not a big deal. When they grow up and have children of their own those children will be bilingual and fully fluent in English. That's the way it's always been. I'm old enough to have seen it happening in real time.

In my immediate neighborhood most people have parents or grandparents who were immigrants. Many people have recent immigrant relatives living in their spare bedrooms. Extended families sharing a single home are common here.

My wife's grandparents were immigrants. My own ancestors came in earlier waves of immigration. They didn't leave Europe for the golden opportunities here in America -- mostly they didn't want to die.

[Celerity]

6. The advanced world is going to have to likely import tens (perhaps 100s) of millions of workers

to prop up their ageing nation states, which in turn is going to cause massive internal socio-economic, socio-political, and socio-cultural conflicts.

Sweden, my home nation atm, is a perfect example, wherein we already see much of this happening, which in turn has allowed the hard white nationalist RW to, for the first time ever in modern history, have true power in the Riksdag (Parliament).

That all is combining with other exacerbating factors, like a disastrous (at the end of the day) 30, 40 or so year trend towards neoliberal taxation and privatisation models, and a resultant explosion in wealth inequality, to start to fracture the nation at multiple bedrock points.

The American immigration model is not easily replicated over here in Europe at all. It is often a case of chalk and cheese when comparing it elsewhere.

A large difference between, for example, Sweden's immigration and the US is that so many of the refugees (refugees make up the vast bulk of our immigration, unlike the US) here really do not want to be here at all, and hate the open, tolerant, secular, democratic culture. A large, large majority are arrivals from war-torn battle theatres (often US-involved ones), and upon arrival so many are greeted by multiple in-place structural underpinnings designed to try and isolate and radicalise them. Some of these forces have operated for decades from inside our very own government unfortunately.

Also, the sheer numbers, when adjusted for the population difference between the US and Sweden are staggering. Imagine the USA bringing in 50 million (yes around 50 million) or so refugees over a 20 to 25 year period, and having the vast bulk be of the Swedish refugee profile. I can assure you the US would be in FAR more conflict than it is now.

We here have also done a pretty poor job job at integration, and far too often have created large pockets of isolated and alienated immigrants.

All that above has helped fuel the rise of the far RW Sweden Democrats, the RW (culturally, not economically) nationalist party. All the other main parties (both right, centre, and left, for the most part) for years (especially after the 2nd US-Iraq war) refused to even discuss immigration other than to accuse anyone (including non whites) who expressed any concerns of being a racist (even though many with issues about it were non white and many of the whites raising concerns were not racist).

That all changed (the barriers to discussion) with the explosion of numbers of refugees from Syria in the mid 2010's, but by then it was too late and the far right Sweden Democrats were already in the Riksdag, and now, as of last fall's national elections they are the 2nd biggest party and have a power-sharing agreement with the centre right and right wing other parties. My wife and I are both members of the centre left to left Social Democrats (most definitely NOT a socialist party, btw, the socialist parties in Sweden have never been officially in power in any government ever), the largest single party here for 100 years, but not always in power, especially starting in the 1990s and beyond.

It is all very hard to effectively convey to many Americans, as too many have a tendency to see the rest of the world only through an American prism. Even the hard right Sweden Democrats for instance, would be considered radical lefties in the US in terms of their support for the expansive Swedish social welfare state. They are extremely different economically from the US Rethugs and many in the US centre, but they do share the white nationalism of most Rethugs. They also are historically anti-Russian, due to our history of centuries of conflict with Russia. Their leader, Jimmie Åkesson, for example, is pro Sweden joining NATO, although some of SD (Sweden Democrats, his party) is not.

[Sky Jewels]

11. Thank you for your informative post!

[Celerity]

12. YW. I also didn't touch upon climate refugees, another potentially massive group (10s of millions at

least).

That is going to create further conflict as well, and will hardly be limited to just the advanced nations in terms of intake. Many will simply move to the next nearest countries, which will often also be some of the poorer nations. Those countries often already have poor infrastructure that is unable to truly support their own people, let alone millions flooding in.

Hello resource wars.

[Sky Jewels]

13. These are some of the reasons I kind of hope my mid-20s kids choose to not have kids.

On some level, I don't think it's fair to the babies to bring them into this melting-down planet.

(Selfishly, though, I would love to experience being a grandparent, TBH.)

[hunter]

19. It will cause problems here *within* the United States.

It's happened before.

Okie was not a term of endearment.

"Florida man" is not going to be welcome anywhere when the heat or the ocean takes his home and his livelihood.

[hunter]

14. U.S. attitudes about immigration are not monolithic.

The immigration patterns that are ordinary everyday life in my California community literally terrify white "conservative" people in other parts of the U.S.A..

I grew up in a place that was 99% white and kept that way by overt and illegal harassment, redlining, and work discrimination. Surprisingly that was invisible to most of the people living there. If you'd asked they would have insisted they were "colorblind." It never occurred to them to ask why all their neighbors were white.

My wife's dad, who is largely Native American, his family from the U.S.A. / Mexico border region, recounts "sundown towns" where guys like him were routinely beaten up by the cops if they couldn't prove their business there. He grew up as a migrant farm worker and remembers entire towns that were simply closed off to farm workers. The farm workers weren't even allowed to walk into town to buy groceries. Leaving the camps was asking for trouble.

My wife and I explicitly decided not to raise our children in white U.S.A.. The only time we've lived in a majority white neighborhood was her first year of graduate school. As a consequence our children, now adults, are comfortable pretty much anywhere they go. Their friends represent a full spectrum of humanity.

As a kid raised by leftist parents (my parents are artists who were there for the day jobs), I knew intellectually there was something seriously "off" about the town I grew up in, which is how I ended up teaching science in a big city where no more than 20% of my students were white. But I'll confess it took me a few years before I was fully comfortable living in a non-majority white environment.

If I can presume to extrapolate my personal experience to places like the Liberal White American Midwest or Liberal Sweden, they're intellectually inclined to embrace diversity but are not yet comfortable with it. This leads to all sorts of frictions and divisions that the right wing exploits.

[uponit7771]

5. ", but that they cannot afford it,"

[roamer65]

8. Inflation plus urbanization.

That will drive birth rates even lower, regardless of any paltry incentives.

Children are more of a high priced showpiece in urban environments, tbh.

[niyad]

9. Blowback. oooops.

[Sky Jewels]

10. Birthrates need to fall drastically worldwide.

Yes, it will be difficult for a while with so many older people relative to younger people and not enough people to care for the elderly. But the planet needs the destructive, violent, parasitic species of primates known as humans to dwindle in number.

[Sky Jewels]

15. A major factor in population decline is climate change

scaring young people into not procreating. My 20-something kids and their friends are very worried about that and weigh it heavily when they talk about having kids some day. At this point my son is thinking he'd rather not have kids. He even broke up with a gf because he couldn't promise her that he could commit to that in the future.

[cagefreesoylentgreen]

16. Demographic panic leads to forced births

Headlines like this make me nervous. With the state of things as they are, I can easily imagine governments citing this to force every woman to birth children as part of national policy. I can see harsh punitive measures taken against women who can’t or won’t have children, up to forced impregnation. To a degree, it’s already started.

[Hekate]

17. China is an autocratic, top-down govt. All they have to do is withdraw contraceptives & abortion...

They did this in reverse with the one-child policy, up to and including forced abortion. Over time they ended up with a massive demographic swing toward males over females (20 million if I recall correctly) as people with access to ultrasound at clinics chose boys over girls for what seemed like sound economic reasons to them individually.

India got caught in this demographic trap as well, but not because the government forced them. With the advent of ultrasound in village clinics, they too could choose to have sons instead of daughters — also for sound economic reasons for them as individuals.

Unless things have changed drastically since I last read up in this, neither country has a safety net for old people who can’t work any more. That falls to any sons they have — the daughters marry into someone else’s family.

The only people in the US who are fretting about our birth rate are those who fear the loss of having a majority of specifically white people. What they don’t want to understand is that immigration is what will keep the country younger and more vital in years to come — and, incidentally, provide the people who will take care of our aged Boomers and their remaining parents.

[crickets]

18. K&R for the post and the discussion.

[LiberalFighter]

20. Tell them that the children will turn into Trump and DeSatan.

And will kill their leaders.