China should focus on childbirth support and lower the cost of raising children as it grapples with demographic issues. These challenges highlight China’s childbirth conundrum. In this situation, costs keep people from getting on board for a baby boom, a Communist Party newspaper urged on Tuesday. It emphasized how China’s childbirth conundrum sees costs keep people from getting on board for a baby boom.
Supporting families with children, including putting more government resources into preschool education, should be prioritized. This should happen in efforts to deal with a population facing this childbirth conundrum. In this conundrum, costs deter individuals from starting families. The population is shrinking and rapidly aging, according to the Study Times, a publication under the Central Party School.
The call came amid authorities’ vow to build a “childbirth-friendly society.” This aims to encourage births as the country’s total population started declining two years ago. The birth rate also fell to an all-time low of 6.39 for every 1,000 people last year.
“Various types of costs paid by families and individuals are the main factors impeding the desire to have children,” the newspaper said. It was in an opinion piece by Du Yang, head of the Institute of Population and Labour Economics under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
It pointed to the substantial gap between China and developed countries in public spending on preschool education. While doing so, it stressed its significance to improving population quality. This is a vision that President Xi Jinping has reiterated. China’s childbirth conundrum sees costs keep people from getting on board for a baby boom as a significant challenge for policymakers.
It also called for optimizing and expanding vocational education. This will help equip China’s workforce with the skills needed to drive productivity and sustain economic growth.
The world’s second-largest economy faces unique demographic challenges that resemble the childbirth conundrum. In this situation, costs prevent embarking on a baby boom, Du emphasized in the article.
Unlike many developed nations that aged gradually, China’s population is doing so while its economy remains in a transitionary phase.
By 2023, 15.4 percent of China’s population was aged 65 or older. This figure is expected to rise sharply by 2050.
Compounding this challenge is the phenomenon of “growing old before getting rich.” China’s per capita GDP lags behind advanced economies at similar stages of aging.
Additionally, “the decline of the total population is a major change in China’s basic development conditions, and it is a situation that has never been encountered when China made plans in the past”, Du said. This indicates the childbirth conundrum impacts more than just population decline. It thoroughly captures how China’s childbirth conundrum sees costs keep people from getting on board for a baby boom.
The Chinese population declined by roughly 850,000 in 2022, marking the first decline since 1961. Last year, the downward trend continued, falling by 2.08 million to 1.4097 billion, according to official data.
With the population and labour force simultaneously shrinking, Du also warned of declining consumption and investment demand.
These shifts require China to adapt its economic growth model. It must move away from factor-driven growth and improve total factor productivity, he said.