Childless Rate of Women in China Soars | Why Don't Young People Get Married or Have Children? | by 700ETH | Ju...
According to a survey released at the 3rd China Population and Development Forum held in Beijing on February 11, China is currently experiencing a change in population, with a low fertility rate and a clear decreasing trend in family size. In particular, the childless rate has been rising rapidly in recent years, from 6.
1% in 2015 to nearly 10% in 2020, triggering public debate and once again becoming the trending topic on Chinese social media Weibo. The concept of marriage and childbirth is changing among the younger generation. The average age of when women first marry has continued to rise from 22 years old in the 1980s to 26.3 years old in 2020, and the age of first childbirth has increased to 27.
2 years old. The willingness of women to bear children continues to decline. However, for those born after the 1990s and in the post-2000 era, who comprise the primary childbearing population, the average number of planned children is lower, at 1.54 and 1.48, respectively. During the three years since the coronavirus outbreak, the Chinese authorities have implemented a strict zero-COVID policy, which has affected the views of many new generations on marriage and childbearing.
Many young people choose to lie low, stop having children, and become the “last generation.” In recent years, China's population crisis has become prominent. The National Bureau of Statistics of China announced on January 17 this year that the national population at the end of 2022 will be 1.
41175 billion, a decrease of 850,000 from the end of the previous year. The natural population growth rate of the country is -0.60 Per mille, which is the first negative growth in 61 years; The birth rate was only 6.77 per 1,000 people, the lowest since 1949. As birth and first marriage rates continue to decline, the Chinese government has implemented various measures to promote childbirth.
In Jilin province, where the birth rate was lower than the death rate in 2021, the “Implementation Plan on Optimizing Fertility Policy to Promote Long-term Balanced Population Development” was issued to support bank institutions to provide loans of up to 200,000 yuan to registered married couples and to provide different levels of interest rate reductions for the birth of one, two or three children.
The news triggered a collective outburst from young people , who even coined new words such as “pass on the loan”, “generational loan”, and “loan for life”. Shenzhen City in Guangdong Province initially planned to give a one-time childbirth subsidy of 10,000 yuan and a childcare subsidy of 3,000 yuan per year for the birth of the third child.
In addition, a child care subsidy of 3,000 yuan will be issued every year. The cumulative subsidy of 19,000 yuan will be issued in three years, and the average annual amount that can be received is 6,333 yuan; even if they only have one child, they can receive a total of 7,500 yuan in subsidies. Shenzhen City in Guangdong Province initially planned to give a one-time childbirth subsidy of 10,000 yuan and a childcare subsidy of 3,000 yuan per year for the birth of the third child.
In addition, a child care subsidy of 3,000 yuan will be issued every year. The cumulative subsidy of 19,000 yuan will be issued in three years, and the average annual amount that can be received is 6,333 yuan; even if they only have one child, they can receive a total of 7,500 yuan in subsidies. Jinan City will provide a monthly subsidy of 600 yuan per child for two- and three-child families.
Families will be given 158 days of maternity leave, and at least 15 days of paternity leave, and each parent with an infant under 3 years old enjoys an annual cumulative total of no less than 10 days of parental leave. Chinese cities including Hangzhou, Nanjing, Shenyang, Qingdao, Changsha, Ningbo, and Xiamen have implemented policies allowing families with two or three children to buy an extra property.
(03:53) Families with two or more children are exempt from housing purchase restrictions. However, while childcare subsidies may ease some financial burdens, improving the child-rearing environment and providing adequate support will be crucial in significantly increasing birth rates. The National Healthcare Security Administration of China has introduced new measures to assist infertile couples, while Sichuan has removed restrictions on marriage status for birth registration, legalizing non-marital births.
Experts have suggested lowering the marriage age to 18 to increase the birth rate. In 2016, China ended the strict one-child policy implemented in the 1980s due to concerns over population growth and began allowing couples to have up to three children in 2021. However, government efforts to encourage childbirth have been unable to reverse the trend of declining population.
Yi Fuxian, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin who has long studied China's population issues, told the BBC that there are three main reasons for China's low birth rate: psychological unwillingness to have children, inability to afford raising them, and physical inability to give birth. He believes that China's policies only address the financial aspect and will not be very effective.
Many netizens attribute the low birth rate to the skyrocketing cost of living and the difficulties of raising children in today's China. One netizen said, “I love my mom, but I won't become a mom.” Another asked, “Why doesn't anyone reflect on why we don't want to have children or get married?” According to a Reuters report, the topic “Is having offspring really important?” gained billions of views on Weibo after China's National Bureau of Statistics released population
data on January 17th this year. One Weibo user, Joyful Ned, wrote, “The fundamental reason why women don't want to have children is not about themselves, but because society and men have failed to take responsibility for raising children. This seriously undermines their quality of life and mental health.
“ Others mocked, “Family planning used to be done well, having fewer but better-quality children to lead a happy life. Everyone contributes to social security, and the government will take care of the elderly. We have achieved having fewer but better-quality children and contributing to social security, but the government has not fulfilled its obligation to take care of the elderly.
“ “Ordinary people's hard-earned money is all tied up in houses…without sufficient disposable income, who dares to have more children? Raising children is expensive nowadays, and social welfare is thin. No one is willing to suffer a bit more.” “In fact, looking at it from another angle, this will be the year with the highest birth rate for the next generation.
“ According to a researcher from the University of Victoria in Australia, Peng Xiu Jian, “due to decades of implementation of the one-child policy, the Chinese people have become accustomed to small families.” She added, “the Chinese government must come up with effective policies to encourage childbirth, otherwise the birth rate will decline even further.
“ Peng Xiu Jian said, “a comprehensive policy program covering production, child-rearing, and education must be introduced to reduce the cost of child-rearing, especially the issue of job insecurity for women after childbirth.” In addition to many couples not wanting to have children after marriage, the phenomenon of young people not wanting to get married or not being able to afford marriage is also severe.
Especially in the case of severe gender imbalances in China, men must pay high dowries to the families of women to get married. Recently, in the face of ineffective incentives for increasing marriage rates, the authorities have come up with a measure that addresses the issue of high-priced dowries and other related problems.
Phoenix Weekly reported that since implementing the central government's policy, Liangshan in Sichuan Province has stopped 528 cases of dowries exceeding 100,000 yuan, involving a total of 70.1 million yuan. Families that responded to the policy lowered their dowries from the original 350,000 yuan to 70,000 yuan.
According to Chinese media The Paper, Dingxi in Gansu Province recently released the implementation of the action plan to control high-priced dowries. In May of last year, the relevant action plan clearly stated that wedding gifts should not exceed 50,000 yuan, and wedding banquets in urban and rural areas should not exceed 20 tables.
In a certain village in Jiangxi province, where the dowry is the highest in the country, a discussion was held for eligible unmarried young women who collectively signed a “pledge to resist high-priced dowries”. It is obvious that the authorities believe that young people are not getting married because dowries are too high.
However, many netizens believe that cracking down on high-priced dowries has had little effect and that there is a high possibility of the overreach of government power during the process. Some netizens say that high-priced dowries are due to high housing prices and the vulnerability of women and children who lack financial security.
The suffering of these vulnerable groups will not be fundamentally solved, and the willingness to get married and have children may decrease even further. Comments from online Chinese users include: “Wedding dowry is a cooperative project between both parties, why not suppress housing prices and tuition fees? What about affordable health care?” “I finally realized that this is just a band-aid solution.
This document doesn't have much substantive meaning, it's just talk. We still need the basics. Once the wealth gap and housing problems are solved, these other issues will naturally disappear over time.” “Every day is absurd, but today is even more so. Finally, we see the Communist Party declare war on mothers-in-law.
“ “The Party has been working hard for the development of the “human” mining industry.” “Why not open more high-quality schools, provide more maternity subsidies, and reduce medical expenses? The government can do all these things but instead chooses to suppress the people.” Apart from lifting restrictions on birth, such as allowing unmarried couples to have children and submit household registration for the newborn, and lowering the legal marriage age to 18, some local authorities have also carried out more bizarre actions.
In October last year, the Telegraph reported that the Chinese government had launched “behind-the-scenes taskforce” to save the declining birth rate, one of which was for government departments to call newlyweds and “urge” them to have children as soon as possible. On October 27, 2022, a Weibo user posted that a newlywed colleague received a phone call from the health department of the Nanjing government, asking her when she planned to get pregnant, and offering “knowledge assistance during pregnancy” and so on.
The department stated that it was a work requirement to call every quarter, with the goal of “hoping that newlyweds can successfully conceive within a year”. This colleague initially thought it was a phone call from the local epidemic prevention department and was very scared. After answering the call and realizing it was a reminder to give birth, she felt even more scared.
Subsequently, thousands of netizens commented that they had received similar phone calls. However, this blog post was deleted a few hours after it was posted. A female netizen wrote that the women's health center in her area “is very responsible and calls me once a month to ask if I am pregnant.
“ She questioned, “Is this a disguised way of forcing me to have a child? They are even more anxious than my mother!” Another woman said she got two calls from local government departments since she got married in August last year. According to reports, Beijing's policies are often enforced through compulsory means, and people generally fear government departments.
Directly calling individuals to urge childbirth undoubtedly creates huge psychological pressure. The Chinese Communist Party is so eager about young people's fertility issues because they are worried that with the arrival of negative population growth, China's demographic dividend will soon disappear, and economic growth will also slow down.
The CCP blatantly treats Chinese citizens as a resource or tool, and now young people in China, like those in other parts of the world, hope to gain more respect and freedom, but these are difficult to obtain under the current social conditions in China. Therefore, facing the 996 work culture (where employees are expected to work from 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week) and social isolation, they would rather choose to “lie flat” and be unmotivated.
This kind of lifestyle also determines their attitudes towards marriage and childbirth. The situation of the lifelong childless rate among Chinese women reaching 10% is actually much more serious than the published data because lifelong childlessness is a lagging concept. Although statistics show that 10% of menopausal women aged 45–50 do not have direct descendants, this does not include women under 45 who are still capable of childbirth.
Compared with Chinese women in their twenties and thirties two or three decades ago, the proportion of young women who do not get married and refuse to have children is much higher, so this proportion will likely continue to rise in the coming years.
