Part 1: China's Birth Rate Uncontrollably Going Down
Jasmine Lee, 30, answered “yes” when asked about whether she would give birth to and, therefore, raise a child once she gets married.
“It’s pretty natural for me and my boyfriend to want to have kids. It’s not even close to a decision that you make based on the accurate calculation of the potential gain or losses; we simply consider parenting the way we live in our thirties to fifties, as our parents did,” she paused for seconds. “We’ll have to prepare for the undesired though, like facing pressures we can’t even imagine when there are just the two of us.”
What pressures? Roaring child care costs. The “double shift” burden on working mothers. The impossibilities of balancing between spending quality time with kids and buying them Lego, piano, and Python courses which demands you go out and overwork. Lee went on with a list of hardships she’s expected to cope with once she becomes a mother.
Working in the educational services sector, she sells courses to desperate parents who want their kids to excel at school performance. Parents who stick to a pair of Nike for years spend money like water when it comes to investment in children’s education. “I could never afford tens of thousands on a course that takes only several hours like most of the parents I encounter,” Lee sighed.
Those younger than Lee show even less optimism as for becoming good parents. We invited 5 young people to share personal feelings and opinions on childcaring. Some of them are college students in perfect relationship with their partners. Some are single. One of them just graduated from college, working on what she loves. Let’s see how they respond:
We also surveyed postgraduate students at Tsinghua University and people under 30 working or living in Beijing. We snowballed participants via the link of our questionnaire inquiring their willingness of and concerns with having kids. And here’s what we found:
There were altogether 131 participants (96 females; 35 males). Less than 40% of females and only over 20% of males were sure about having kids in the future. Females seemed to be more decisive as for whether they would have children or not, taking up more percentage of both “yes” and “no” than male participants. The ideal childbearing age was perceived earlier by females than males. More males than their female counterparts want 2 or more babies in a family. Overall, both males and females displayed a major reluctance to endure the burden of having kids.
What gets in the way of entering parenthood were young people’s concerns over finding a reliable partner, their own mental maturity as a parent, child care expenses, and work-life balance. It seemed a bit surprising how females (39%) worried more about the costs of raising kids than males (32%) and how males (30%) were more concerned with work-life balance than females (20%). Intimate relationships, financial status, and personal growth contribute to the willingness of having kids.
If you are interested in how representative the sample is, please refer to the demographic distribution chart. And you may want to look at more authoritative data from National Bureau of Statistics.
The recently released China Statistical Yearbook 2021 shows that, in 2020, the national birth rate hit a 43-year low since 1978, falling below 1% (0.85%). During the same year, the natural population growth rate (birth rate mortality) plummeted at 1.45 ‰, also a record low since 1978. The news of China's low birth rate has not appeared in the public's view for the first time. The downward trend of both birth rate and natural growth rate started in 2016 and accelerated since then, going respectively from 1.30% to 0.85% and from 0.59% to 0.15% during 2016-2020. China's birth rate uncontrollably going down is never a future problem, but an urgent one. And now we couldn’t help but ponder what causes the downslide.
