China demographics thread.

[Nevermore]

Relying solely on fertility benefits at the level of developed countries may only maintain a fertility rate of 1.4, but isn't this already very good? Think about it, if the Chinese government does nothing, China's fertility rate may be lower than South Korea in five years.
At present, the obvious factors suppressing fertility in China are still economic factors, time, marriage opportunities, etc. Only after these are resolved can we talk about: "Why don't you have children when you have no pressure in life?"

 

[CMP]

In short, China's demographics are still better than the entire West combined.

 

[dirtyid]

Relying solely on fertility benefits at the level of developed countries may only maintain a fertility rate of 1.4, but isn't this already very good? Think about it, if the Chinese government does nothing, China's fertility rate may be lower than South Korea in five years.
At present, the obvious factors suppressing fertility in China are still economic factors, time, marriage opportunities, etc. Only after these are resolved can we talk about: "Why don't you have children when you have no pressure in life?"

1.4 is not replacement, <2 is net population decline absent immigration. If goal is sustaining population at X setpoint then anything under 2 is buying time but still failure. 1.4 TFR is PRC with ~600M pop by 2100. Current 1.1 TFR is ~400m by 2100. Maybe a little higher if lifespan increase, but 2100 pop is not stablized, continued decline, bleeding net people YoY.

I mentioned in #3,252 that even the most per capita resource rich countries like those in MENA with religious/cultural prediposition towards large families have sunk below 2 from 3-4, or on way there (Saudi/Kuwait is going to drop below 2 in the next few years). There does not appear to be any fertility benefit policies that can sustain >2 TFR for developed / high income societies.

PRC TFR probably going to bounce back somewhat, culture adjusting to 60%+ youth in tertiary that will push back family formation. One child policy / family planning = 8:4:2 wealth transfer to couples i.e. many couples are going to inherit property + resources, but that's a one time phenomenon and doubtful that will bring TFR even close to 2. Maybe TFR 1.5 if lucky. IMO that's about the best "why don't you have children because no pressure in life" talk can get you.

So still need to figure policy to plug TFR gap, whether that's immigration or something else. That something can be bioengineering moonshot or it can be coercive natalism policy. But it's other nessecary component because improving social factors will only get so far.

Lazy charts (assuming Jensen's GB200 math correct), assuming stabilized 800m by 2100 (800m number I like, ~2x US population by 2100, and current 1.4B - 600 migrant/informal/manual agri workforce that can be made more productive).

Values are how many MILLIONs of birth shortfalls, i.e. bring TFR up to 1.5, assume people live until 85, will still need 1-6 million addition bodies PER YEAR to have stablize 800m between 2050-2100. Medsci increase life expectancy to 150? @1.5 TFR need to conjure 1-3 million additional bodies starting from 2070s to have 800m by 2100. BTW life expectancy at 300 by 2050, and still need 1-2m+ babies at current TFR of ~1.1. Does anyone think we'll raise life expectancy for _all_ existing Chinese to 300 years by 2050. Does anyone think PRC can maintain geopolitical position without at least being a 800m country? We can speculawank about future tech, but right now I'm hedging on bodies.

Lifespan 85 (currently ~80)



Lifespan 150:




There is no avoiding at PRC scale, need to conjure a fuckload of new bodies to stabilize population to remain demographically competitive/geopolitically relevant. That means either massive, massive, immigration. Or massive, massive test tube babies. Or without moonshot tech, massive state surrogacy/orphanage program to manage demographics.

Pick 2050, because that is medium term, useful for geopolitical extrapolation for most of our immediate futures, PRC coasting on legacy births ~250m in past 20 years and tertiary enrollment of 60% /w 30% STEM enrollment, and we're talking 45m just STEM. Can probably bring this number to 60/70 if hammering/biasing STEM hard. They'll be in workforce for 40+ years, aka for purpose of global competition PRC is reaping the greatest high skilled demographic divident in recorded history that can be milked beyond 2060s/70s/80s. But that divident will burn out unless it's sustained by millions of new bodies beyond current TFR and what even optmistic TFR policies can sustain.

TLDR is if you think PRC should be 2x size of US for geopolitical competition, and you think we can get TFR up to 1.5 or lifespan to 150 in the shortterm, there's still going to be need to find millions of new bodies per year starting 2050/60s/70s+ with that need INCREASING YoY accomodate <2 TFR.

 

[TK3600]

OK what if parent can just have a baby, and 'donate' it to the government where the government take care of the needs and education of the child, help it get a basic job, in return for something like obliged to sign up for a job needed by the country, like ship building?

 

[Eventine]

I think we've been going around in circles. The facts are clear, the only valid counter arguments have been along the lines of:

1. The future can't be extrapolated based on the present. (= TFR will miraculously restore itself).
2. AI & robots will make demographics irrelevant. (= Population doesn't matter because singularity).
3. Everybody else is suffering from it too. (= There's nothing we can do any way).

Rather than debate each of these arguments endlessly, I'm going to take a different strategy, and state that it really isn't that hard to solve the problem if societies wanted to (= The reason it is not being solved is due to a lack of political will, not because it is impossible).

I'm going to use the US as an example because I am most familiar with its economic data, but if anything, this thought exercise should be even more valid for China.

The US GDP is $29 trillion. The median personal income is $61,984. Let's assume raising a child is a full-time job. Then we'll need to subsidize a house hold for ~$62,000 / year for 20 years (18 + 1 for pregnancy, round up to nearest ten) for 1 child. Let's assume (even though this is not true since there is synergy in raising children) that each additional child also costs $62,000 per year. Then, for 20 years, we'll need a net cost (adjusted for inflation) of $62,000 x 20 = $1,240,000 per child.

How many extra children do we need per year? According to AI, the answer is an additional ~855,500 to achieve a TFR of 2.1 (from current TFR = 1.62 for the US in 2024).

855,500 x $1,240,000= ~$1.06 trillion

For a country with a GDP of $29 trillion, this is less than 3.7% of the country's GDP per year required to subsidize the birth rate to achieve replacement fertility. To put it another way, this is roughly the size of the US's defense budget, and 50% less than the amount the US spends on its Social Security budget.

Is it impossible for a country to raise an additional 3.7% of its GDP and dedicate it to raising TFR? Maybe if you're one of those people who believe that GDP & productivity > all, with no care towards sustainability, and that short-term geopolitical & economic competition is all that matters. But if what you care about is the long-term sustainability of a country, then it goes without saying that this is a small price to pay for that.

As for the counter argument that subsidizing people the entire amount of their income per child is not enough to get them to have children? Well, there's obviously no counter factual evidence for a hypothetical, but I would highly question that most people wouldn't be willing to receive 3x their personal income to raise 3 children for 20 years. Hell, I'd do it myself if we had a policy like that.

 

[Moonscape]

As for the counter argument that subsidizing people the entire amount of their income per child is not enough to get them to have children? Well, there's obviously no counter factual evidence for a hypothetical, but I would highly question that most people wouldn't be willing to receive 3x their personal income to raise 3 children for 20 years. Hell, I'd do it myself if we had a policy like that.

I suspect you are underestimating how utterly exhausting and all-consuming raising children is, because you do not have kids yourself.

And yes, having kids is really exhausting. And there's not much economies of scale with raising multiple kids.

Also you can't trick people into raising 3 or 4 all at once. People will have 1 or 2, and say this is enough, we can't handle more regardless of the subsidy, and stop.

Yet the only way to raise TFR to 2 is for people to have 3 or 4, because for every woman who doesn't have children, you need another one to have 4 or two to have 3. And it's way way easier to have no kids than to have 3 or 4 kids.

I don't think enough people will bite the bullet and have 3-4 kids for any sort of conceivably realistic subsidy to cancel out the increasing number of people who have no kids or only have 1 kid.

Also, this isn't taking into account what kind of kids would be produced by parents who are motivated by subsidies to have kids, and whether those kids would be a net positive.


AGI/amortality is the only realistic way out. (They are interchangable since the former would lead to the latter). Otherwise we'll go extinct like Calhoun's rats. I personally think this is the Great Filter. We will know in about 10-20 years whether humanity has made it out - potentially sooner depending on how spicy the AGI race between the US and China gets.

 

[TK3600]

If state were to finance raising children, it will cost more than parent spending time to raise children. You also must have housing, pay caretaker, etc. It quickly get out of hand if paying for full thing. So I think the best way is still a hybrid approach, that the children live with parents, and parents still must still expend time and energy, the state only bear the cost of living.

 

[jshw31]

What lessons can be learned from Israel's TFR? Obviously there are many aspects of Israel that does not and will never apply to China, but with a TFR of 2.9 which is the highest for a developed nation, perhaps there are a few good takeaways.

 

[dirtyid]

Turning large % of "productive" bodies into career parents will remove their contribution to workforce, sure you can tweak calcs to include parent wages from essentially gov subsidies, but it's removing value/production from other sectors, net result is there's less resources to subsidize system. Opportunity cost for half the population of raising kids is more than median income. Maybe you bring them to 75 percentile by overlapping 2 kids, but then there's opportunity cost that average work years before retirement is ~40. A few year overlap with kids and you'll have career parents with no highend workforce experience losing opportunity cost of working low skill jobs for another 10 years... and then social services to support them. I surmise actual $$$ for full time parents, which has to be priced to so demand matches supply of TFR2.1 gap is going to be much higher than median.Hence policy move towards "supporting" fertility benefits, but we already have ample evidence this doesn't bring TFR close to 2.1.

Hence state fertility/child rearing system. Reward people (well women) for getting 1,2 kids out early, minimize career impact, maintain workforce size... because you're competing with other countries with high workforce particaption rates from both genders. State raises some % of kids... every 0.1 in TFR is about 5% of birth gap. Bring TFR to 1.5 and 1/3 of new bodies will be state raised. Or you can have 1/3 of pop increase from immigration. If modern material conditions and incentives naturally drives TFR below 2.1 even with fertility benefits, then there's no avoiding filling bodies to maintain pop setpoint some other way.

 

[TK3600]

What lessons can be learned from Israel's TFR? Obviously there are many aspects of Israel that does not and will never apply to China, but with a TFR of 2.9 which is the highest for a developed nation, perhaps there are a few good takeaways.

The lesson is most of birth in Israel are by highly religious population. Not something possible to replicate in China.

By the way is your name an anagram of j3w1sh?