China demographics thread.

[Staedler]

I think It doesn't work, green births, red deaths. The effect was for two years. Since 2016, additionally I guess about 1 million Ukrainian woman also came, which give additional births.

I don't know Polish, so I was looking at English-language graphs such as this:



Which seems to indicate that it had an effect, but it has never been a silver bullet. I have seen criticism that quality of child care, flexibility of leaves, etc. haven't increased since the policy was enacted. That would make sense since just giving money to people to have children doesn't affect what that money can buy.

If the quality and number of child care, housing, etc. is limited, then without expansions in that supply eventually the "free money" will just cause prices to rise. Expecting the market to correct and cause more people to enter those professions is a slow almost decade-long process which obviously won't show up for the short duration the program has been ongoing. That is not mentioning the possiblity that the market doesn't correct to that outcome.

So as I've been saying, governments have been taking steps, but they haven't been comprehensive enough. There should also be a national program to increase housing/childcare, etc. supply and other programs in addition to what is in-effect a UBI for child-making.

 

[Abominable]

As far as I am aware, the Polish policies of simply giving money to heterosexual couples to have a child have worked. At the very least there has been a statistically significant increase in birth rates post-policy. Apparently they had spent PLN 21 billion in 2017, or about 0.9% of their GDP. Looking at the TFR, it does look like that has boosted rates by 0.1 since it was started in 2015 (~1.35 when started and ~1.45 now). If trends continue Polish TFR might settle somewhere around 1.7.

I've seen some argument that it was because of the near universality of the benefits that Poland's policy has made an impact whereas the loans and other financial tricks used by countries like Hungary have failed. I'm not too familiar with the exact details of the Polish 500+ policy, but it appears to apply to basically all 2nd and above child and across all income levels. If the household income level is low enough, it also applies to the 1st child. Of course, initial data also suggests the policy has lowered female labor force participation rates by 2.5-3% so it's not like there hasn't been any additional consequences.

So I agree in general, it does look like just giving a significant amount of money to every women having whatever-parity child would work.

The problem with financial incentives any why I oppose them is that they don't come close in matching how much it costs to have a child. For most people having children is their biggest lifetime expense.

We have data on how financial incentives impact birth rates. For decades western Europe and Scandinavia in particular have tried multiple times yet none have been able to revive birth rates for a protracted period. People get used to the free money/services and then go back to their old ways. And if the incentives are withdrawn for any reason (e.g. USSR, eastern Europe post communism), birth rates will plummet to below what they were originally.

 

[Staedler]

The problem with financial incentives any why I oppose them is that they don't come close in matching how much it costs to have a child. For most people having children is their biggest lifetime expense.

We have data on how financial incentives impact birth rates. For decades western Europe and Scandinavia in particular have tried multiple times yet none have been able to revive birth rates for a protracted period. People get used to the free money/services and then go back to their old ways. And if the incentives are withdrawn for any reason (e.g. USSR, eastern Europe post communism), birth rates will plummet to below what they were originally.

Yes... I posted earlier in this thread that it costs 250-300k USD to raise a minimally-competitive child in the USA. Also that no government has made that level of effort in offsetting the cost because it amounts to around 5% of US GDP for the US population size. The Polish policy looks to be the highest effort so far at 0.9% of GDP but it wasn't accompanied by any government intervention into the supply side.

I don't think you can blame the incentives for the birth rates plummeting in ex-USSR/ex-Warsaw Pact. It's not like the economy, life, etc. was sitting pretty in those decades of collapse. And talking about removing the incentives is moot anyways. The whole problem is the cost of raising a child has risen dramatically due to the nature and expectations of developed economies. Unless you plan on turning the country back into an undeveloped economy, there's not much way that cost will significantly lower.

The point of incentives is to subsidize costs of child-rearing to the point that it's similar to an undeveloped economy. Like any subsidy, there needs to be an actual plan to also increase supply on the necessary goods or it will just cause inflation in the long term.

 

[ZeEa5KPul]

Will this have a plan for couples physically unable to have kids or infertile?

Sure, they pay the tax. People are going to get whacked with the stick who don't deserve to be. Tough.

Really? You know the reasons why all people in history had children?

I've a pretty good idea.

What about the most common reason people have children today - because they like children and want them?

Sure, the evolutionary impulse is there but there are strong countervailing factors and they're winning mightily.

What about the religious obligation, or a cultural moral duty to have children, and for a male a sign of virility?

Contrary to what you think, it's ultimately all economics. Cultural and religious factors are the detritus of dead economies where high fertility was a successful economic and geopolitical strategy. Pro-natal norms emerged due to this success and stuck around after the economic fundamentals changed. Take the example of the Islamic world where there are strong pro-natal norms - the countries in that sphere are uniformly backward and, unless there's hydrocarbons, poor. The populations are expanding but they have no economic utility because they're uneducated and have no access to the technology necessary to compete.

Thanks to decades of western subreplacement fertility rates and multiple failures, we have a lot of data on what works and doesn't work. Financial incentives don't work, they only lead to a temporary increase in births. If you are thinking only about economics, children will always be a bad idea.

That's only true of present economic incentives, which is what I argue must change. As for financial incentives, there are two reasons why these data are inapplicable to China:

1. These programs were all implemented by democracies, and failure is the default outcome for any program implemented by a democracy.
2. More importantly, it's all (paltry) carrots and no stick. That's never going to work. The carrot doesn't work without the stick and vice versa.

The only successful method has been immigration from higher fertility regions such as the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. This is the only reason why western European fertility rates are slightly above eastern Asia.

You're talking about the West and that's not a discussion I care to have. I consider the West a failure, so I'm not really interested in intellectually wading into their failures.

Low fertility rates are a symptom of liberalism, and that includes feminism, homosexuality and many tenants of the modern western lifestyle. Very low rates seen in Japan & South Korea are a result of the above PLUS low immigration rates.

First of all, how much traction does feminism, homosexuality, etc. have in China? I don't care about plummeting fertility in the West. I'd be overjoyed if no Western woman ever had a child again. I care about China and the factors relevant to China.

 

[Abominable]

Contrary to what you think, it's ultimately all economics. Cultural and religious factors are the detritus of dead economies where high fertility was a successful economic and geopolitical strategy. Pro-natal norms emerged due to this success and stuck around after the economic fundamentals changed. Take the example of the Islamic world where there are strong pro-natal norms - the countries in that sphere are uniformly backward and, unless there's hydrocarbons, poor. The populations are expanding but they have no economic utility because they're uneducated and have no access to the technology necessary to compete.

That's only true of present economic incentives, which is what I argue must change. As for financial incentives, there are two reasons why these data are inapplicable to China:

It's only all about economics to you and others who think like you, which is becoming a more popular opinion to have.

People need to stop thinking about children purely in economic terms.

The cost of having children will always be more than what a state can provide. If a state ever made having children profitable, it would go bankrupt pretty quickly.

First of all, how much traction does feminism, homosexuality, etc. have in China? I don't care about plummeting fertility in the West. I'd be overjoyed if no Western woman ever had a child again. I care about China and the factors relevant to China.

The answer, a lot more than 70 year ago. If ignored it will continue to spread.

Liberalism is a global phenomenon.

 

[tokenanalyst]

First of all, how much traction does feminism, homosexuality, etc. have in China? I don't care about plummeting fertility in the West. I'd be overjoyed if no Western woman ever had a child again. I care about China and the factors relevant to China.

From my experience traveling to some countries, I have noticed that women who don't work have more children and they have it younger, in some cases way younger. Basically they take being a full time housewife as a job.

 

[ZeEa5KPul]

People need to stop thinking about children purely in economic terms.

You need to broaden your definition of what "economic" means. You seem to think the only solution is to shower people with ever-increasing quantities of money, and that's not what I'm advocating. What I advocate is government intervention throughout the economy and society to realign incentives toward higher fertility through both reward and punishment. Examples of such methods:

• Taxes on people without children. Tax exemptions for people with children.
• Expanded career and educational opportunities for people with 2+ children and the children themselves.
• Minimum quotas on companies hiring people with children and punishments for not granting sufficient child care leave, etc.
• Fines on companies who have too many senior employees without children.

That's direct economic intervention. China is also unique in that the government has a very strong hold on the media and cultural industries. There you can implement the same reward/punishment system for film studios/television show producers/social media companies to push pro-natal narratives and suppress anti-natal ones.

You can broadly caption my ideas as "Affirmative Action for the Two Child Family" and funding that affirmative action program through taxes on people outside it.

 

[tokenanalyst]

Besides people read to much into things, this trend is probably more due COVID stress in the population due lockdowns and others COVID related factors. As people learn to "live with COVID" the population growth trend would probably go back to past growth trend from 2023 and on. China is not unique in this trend.

 

[BoeingEngineer]

Work-life balance/economics is usually the biggest problem. When everyone is slaving to afford an apartment and a good education for their child, don't expect them to go for a second and a third child

Social engineering should also be on the cards after the work-life balance/economic aspect has been addressed.

The main problem is western influence !!

It needs to be removed from China before baby boom could happen !!

 

[Will76]

First of all, how much traction does feminism, homosexuality, etc. have in China? I don't care about plummeting fertility in the West. I'd be overjoyed if no Western woman ever had a child again. I care about China and the factors relevant to China.

I think these are officially banned in China, aren't they?