In the middle of last month, China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) held a conference on the operation of the national economy. In the past, on this occasion, the NBS would announce the birth population data of the previous year, but this Time, officials said that the announcement would be delayed until April. However, from the data released in each place, it can be seen that China’s birth population has dropped significantly, and some people even described that China has “birth population collapse”.
Checking the data, the number of births in many cities has dropped by an average of 10% to 30%. In Taizhou, the number of births in 2020 is 37,420, a decrease of 32.6% over the same period in 2019. This is followed by Guiyang, with 38,462 births from January to September 2020, a decrease of 31.6% over the same period in 2019. Weifang, Hefei and Pinghu, on the other hand, saw declines of 25.8%, 23% and 21.17%, respectively. By contrast, the big city of Guangzhou saw a less dramatic decline of 9%.
Liang Jianzhang, a Chinese entrepreneur and chairman of Ctrip, wrote an article describing China as “the wolf of the collapsing birth population is really here.” In fact, China has implemented a comprehensive two-child policy in 2016, but five years later, it still has not been able to save the problem of falling births, why?
Liang analyzed several reasons for this, the first of which is the sharp decline in the number of young people in China and the number of women of childbearing age, while another important reason is the high cost of housing and Education in China, which has led to a general sluggishness in fertility intentions. As an example, the house price to income ratio in Shenzhen is 35.2, which is equivalent to a Family having to go without Food and drink for 35.2 years to be able to afford a house.
Liang estimates that 2020 is likely to be the year with the largest number of births in China in the next few decades, and that fertility rates will continue to decline in the future. He suggests lowering the burden of raising the average family in terms of housing, parenting and education costs, such as a land-price exemption policy for multi-child families, or even refunding land tax to families who buy a house and then have more children, personal income tax relief in the form of child tax credits, and direct childcare subsidies.
According to Liang, these measures are a long-term investment in China’s human resources, and investing in human resources is one of the most rewarding options for China’s economy, which is currently suffering from overcapacity.
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