China demographics thread.

[FairAndUnbiased]

And then birth control happened.

Worse, for the last few decades, birth control was mandatory.

There's no going back to the before times.

do either of those have to do with 'secular, socially conservative society' part?

non-secular societies:

Iran: birth rates collapsed in the 2000's, despite not being anywhere near secular.

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Saudi Arabia: birth rates collapsed in the 2000's, also despite not being anywhere near secular.

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non-conservative societies:

Finland: birth rates collapsed as early as 1972, despite not being anywhere near socially conservative.

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Ireland: birth rates collapsed in the 1990's, despite not being anywhere near socially conservative.

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There are no religious yet socially liberal societies in existence as a comparison, so I can only do single counterexamples.

So, what countries have high birth rates?

Poor agricultural and mining ones with low GDP, literacy and life expectancy.

 

[fatzergling]

do either of those have to do with 'secular, socially conservative society' part?

non-secular societies:

Iran: birth rates collapsed in the 2000's, despite not being anywhere near secular.

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Saudi Arabia: birth rates collapsed in the 2000's, also despite not being anywhere near secular.

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non-conservative societies:

Finland: birth rates collapsed as early as 1972, despite not being anywhere near socially conservative.

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Ireland: birth rates collapsed in the 1990's, despite not being anywhere near socially conservative.

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There are no religious yet socially liberal societies in existence as a comparison, so I can only do single counterexamples.

So, what countries have high birth rates?

Poor agricultural and mining ones with low GDP, literacy and life expectancy.

Ultra-religious movements that turn women into living incubators have insanely high birthrates. The Quiverfull movement in the US has families have 7+ children total.
Are you willing to pay any price to bring up the birth rate? There are such methods, but they are quite ... unsavory to put it mildly.

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

Ultra-religious movements that turn women into living incubators have insanely high birthrates. The Quiverfull movement in the US has families have 7+ children total.
Are you willing to pay any price to bring up the birth rate? There are such methods, but they are quite ... unsavory to put it mildly.

yep, you have to make Iran and Saudi Arabia look like a pride parade in Norway to do it. that's just unfeasible for a modern economy. Iran and Saudi are as conservative and religious as you can go for any semblance of modernity, and they're closer to Norway in fertility than they are to Quiverfull.

 

[Abominable]

yep, you have to make Iran and Saudi Arabia look like a pride parade in Norway to do it. that's just unfeasible for a modern economy. Iran and Saudi are as conservative and religious as you can go for any semblance of modernity, and they're closer to Norway in fertility than they are to Quiverfull.

There is some truth in what he's saying. Religious families tend to have more children than secular ones. Even if there is a secular movement in countries like Iran and Turkey, the secular families are out-bred by religious families. So while there is a drop in fertility rates in some countries, it will likely be temporary.

None of this is applicable to China, which has always been a secular society.

 

[Biscuits]

Ultra-religious movements that turn women into living incubators have insanely high birthrates. The Quiverfull movement in the US has families have 7+ children total.
Are you willing to pay any price to bring up the birth rate? There are such methods, but they are quite ... unsavory to put it mildly.

This, people keep complaining about family planning advices created by the government, while ignoring the fact that their purpose is to create a more fair and equitable sexual environment. If someone who would have wanted birth control but doesn't know about it has 5 kids, is that really a win for the state, whose job is to improve the life quality of the citizens?

China would not have world class reproductive health if the government didn't campaign to educate people in having the freedom to choose birth control.


Notice how the big drop in fertility the 1990s is more than a full decade after legislation to increase costs on having several children was introduced. For more than a decade, families just ignored and tanked the penalty.

What changed a decade later?

The young and more educated generation grew up, and they realized they had a choice not to be baby machines. The financial penalties only helped to speed up reproductive liberation, by giving solid arguments to the younger generation, why they shouldn't have tons of kids against their will.

Better reproductive health was absolutely worth fighting for, even if it hypothetically would cause a smaller workforce decades from now. That can be solved later with immigration, different types of subsidies and so on.

Besides the entire developed world is reaching similar low birth rates. Some countries are masking it by importing high fertility families from the third world, but such plans have their own difficulties, and in the end, they haven't achieved higher fertility for the natives anyways.

 

[gadgetcool5]

There is some truth in what he's saying. Religious families tend to have more children than secular ones. Even if there is a secular movement in countries like Iran and Turkey, the secular families are out-bred by religious families. So while there is a drop in fertility rates in some countries, it will likely be temporary.

None of this is applicable to China, which has always been a secular society.

Correct. There is a lot of evidence that religious people have more children, and the more religious you are, the more children you have. The evidence comes from all over the world:

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The only thing I would disagree with you is that it is applicable to China too, since the Hui Muslims of northwest China have an unusually high fertility rate! The Dungans of Central Asia have a TFR over 2.5. Chinese Muslims are literally the last remaining high fertility East Asian group on earth.

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[gadgetcool5]

do either of those have to do with 'secular, socially conservative society' part?

non-secular societies:

Iran: birth rates collapsed in the 2000's, despite not being anywhere near secular.

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Saudi Arabia: birth rates collapsed in the 2000's, also despite not being anywhere near secular.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

non-conservative societies:

Finland: birth rates collapsed as early as 1972, despite not being anywhere near socially conservative.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Ireland: birth rates collapsed in the 1990's, despite not being anywhere near socially conservative.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

There are no religious yet socially liberal societies in existence as a comparison, so I can only do single counterexamples.

So, what countries have high birth rates?

Poor agricultural and mining ones with low GDP, literacy and life expectancy.

According to your sources:

Iran's fertility rate is 2.09, which is extremely high by East Asian standards.

Saudi Arabia's fertility rate is 2.175, which is even higher than Iran's.

Finland's fertility rate is 1.42, which is very high by East Asian standards.

Ireland's fertility rate is 1.79, which is much higher than Finland and almost as high as Iran.

All of those countries have high birth rates compared to the secular, socially conservative East Asian countries. It would be considered a miracle by anyone hoping for higher East Asian fertility, if any East Asian country outside of North Korea or Mongolia had those fertility rates next year.

(That is assuming those numbers are right, which I have doubts as to, since for China, they claim the birth rate for 2022 is higher than in 2016 even though China had 45% fewer births in 2022 than 2016. The number of fertile women in China did not drop more than 45% between 2016 and 2022, so we know their data for China is not right.)

Secular social conservatism is a civilization-killer. This would be more clear if there were more religious socially liberal societies, but there are not because all the world's major religions are socially conservative. But there is evidence that secularism lowers birth rates, and when you add social conservatism and East Asian work culture on top of that, it's even worse.

 

[gadgetcool5]

Ultra-religious movements that turn women into living incubators have insanely high birthrates. The Quiverfull movement in the US has families have 7+ children total.
Are you willing to pay any price to bring up the birth rate? There are such methods, but they are quite ... unsavory to put it mildly.

Do you think the Amish live in a morally unsavory and abhorrent way? Do you think Amish women are more miserable than Saudi women?

 

[KYli]

Iran fertility rate is 1.7 not 2.09. 1.7 fertility is below replacement and is similar with many Western developed countries. Saudi Arabia fertility rate is almost 2.4. However, Saudi Arabia is going to cut welfare so expect the fertility rate to continue to decline.

Finland and Canada both have very low fertility rate. Compare with Japan 1.37 fertility rate which is much more secular and ultra competitive, both Finland Canada have demonstrated the myth of high fertility rate for not secular countries.

Singapore, Hong Kong and Macao are all just cities or city-state. They are not comparable. Many Western cities also have very low fertility rate. For East Asian, South Korea is the most problematic as its government and society have pushed the people to their limit.

Religious countries don't necessary have better fertility rate if such countries are fully developed and urbanized. The only exception is those society that provide handouts. Religious people such as ultra orthodox Jews in Israel and NYC are mostly rely upon government welfare.

Other religious groups such as Amish live in isolation. They are not that much different from Saudi women. More importantly, these people are not productive. Similar with many Chinese isolated communities, these people live in pre-industrialized lifestyle. For these people, as long as the farmland can sustain their population then they are fine. However, most of these societies would end up in poverty and have a short life span.

I don't know why people would recommend religious as a savior for fertility rate. Religion can only influence fertility rate in 2 ways. First, they solely rely upon government handouts and become an unproductive part of society that drain the resources of the country such as Ultra orthodox Jews in Israel that have slowly depleted Israel's finance. Second, those that try to live in isolation which have no contribution to the nation. Both of such instances are not desirable and could eventually become a huge problem if a large group of people become unproductive.

 

[Jiang ZeminFanboy]

I would wish China had Iran 1.7 or Japan 1.37 TFR because this year it seems it will fall below the 1.0 (2022 - 1.08) if prediction of about 7 million births are correct. Right now China is following South Korea, we'll see if there's going to be any change to the current pattern of free fall in births. I hope it can go back to 1.4 or above.