By now unless you’ve just awakened from a coma, you know that China officially announced the end of its short-lived two-child policy yesterday.
Now Chinese families can have three kids …but will anyone actually take the bait and have another child? Residents of Beijing are skeptical.
The announcement comes after China’s 2020 census showed the country’s population continues to grow at the slowest pace in decades, despite continuous attempts at sparking new growth.
Around 12 million babies were born in China last year, a big drop from the 18 million born in 2016. This was not what government planners were hoping for – as 2016 was the year that the last remnants of the one-child policy were ditched in an effort to boost the birth rate.
Planners are worried because the 2020 birth rate of 1.3 children per Chinese woman is on par with rapidly aging societies like Japan and Italy – which could mean trouble for younger generations left to care for retirees that are also coincidentally living longer than ever.
How did we get here?
China’s one child policy was first introduced in the late 1970s in order to control population growth. Under the policy, vast swaths of the population were not eligible to have a second child without incurring fines and other punishments as a result.
In 2013, the policy was relaxed, allowing couples to have two children if at least one of the parents was an only child. The one-child restriction was then fully lifted for everyone in 2016.
However, judging by reactions in Beijing, the new policy may not exactly spur a baby boom, except amongst those well off enough to not have to worry about affording more children.
In one Weibo post that has been floating around as a meme, a poster laments the burden a generation of people born into one-child families face:
“Those of us single children born in the 80s and 90s get married and we’re faced with taking care of two sets of aging parents – and now they want us to have three kids, and work our asses off until we’re 65 before collecting a pension… we should be given a medal for sacrificing ourselves for our country.” And the most popular reply to the post? “Don’t forget that if you’re not dead by 65, you’ll also have 9 grandchildren to take care of…”
Some are speculating that if China really wants to spark growth, not only are they going to have to lift restrictions, but they’ll also have to add additional incentives as well.
However, experience with incentives in other developed economies has not done a lot, most claiming to state that whatever benefits have been offered have not offset the sacrifices and cost-of-living challenges that couples say turned them off larger families to begin with.
This is particularly true in a place like Beijing, where the general cost of living is already high, particularly when it comes to pre- and post-natal care, education, and housing.
A poll that was run in China’s CGTN state media last night asked people if the policy would make any difference in their family planning. Of the married people that responded, only 4% of respondents now plan on a third child, while a full 88% said they would for sure not consider more kids. The remaining 8% replied that it was too early to make a decision.
Images: Pexels Source: People’s Daily, BBC, Reuters
