Do you guys think China will use reverse one Child Policy style penalties and massive social, media campaign to boost Birth Rate by creating a culture where not having children is seen as anti-social and taboo? This is exactly what happened with one child policy where having even 2 children was seen as taboo and being anti-society anti-patriotic and so on.
Decades of birth reduction policies have created a culture in China where having Children is deeply unpopular. Young people openly crticize intiatives on Weibo to raise births and talk about about how they will never have children and so on. I don't think this would have been allowed if Chinese govt intiates a policy to change social culture around having children. They would have been censored.
If China was serious about raising birth rates. They could easily create a social and media campaign that shows people who have jobs but no children are freeloaders who are putting burden on other people children to support them in their old age. They could make it that anyone that do not have children are social outcasts and villains and do not contribute to society. Then they could easily penalize such people with higher taxes, not allowing such people to apply for certain high quality jobs or even not allowing promotion to higher positions.
I believe just monetary incentives are not enough to boost birth rates. There needs to be a change people's mindset about having children. Having children should not be seen by the public as a luxury but an absolute necessity. In the past, people had no social safety net and thus having children was a must. Now they don't have such pressures, so government has to step in create such pressures so that not having children becomes a liability. Only then will people devote years of theirs lives to raise children.
On the contrary, I think it is not that young people do not have the pressure to have children, but that they have too much pressure. The change in mindset is based on reality. Twenty or thirty years ago, the burden of having a child was not so heavy, mainly because the cost of housing prices and education were not so high.
This is not just in China, but throughout East Asia.
I don't think there is currently an effective direct way to increase fertility (Japan has tried various strategies and if there is a way it should be discovered by now). If there is a penalty for not having children or having only one child, then people would rather accept the penalty than have children because of the penalty. If the punishment is too heavy, then there will be social problems. Only by reducing the cost of living, childbearing and education can the trend of declining fertility rate be slowed down.
