China Is Pressing Women to Have More Babies. Many Are Saying No | Hacker News Reader

China Is Pressing Women to Have More Babies. Many Are Saying No

wsj.com

29 pointscrhulls74 comments

The reality is that in so many countries is that it is too expensive to have more kids than 1 or 2. You have both parents working, living in an expensive place, paying for day care, buying a bigger car, etc.. you end up needing to be well above middle class to actually afford 3-4 kids.. then when you factor in university, then you basically need to win the lottery or your kids end up with tons of debt. And in many cities in China you effectively are an immigrant in your own country trying to become a resident where you can access the cities better healthcare system and schools etc.. so people have a big incentive to want to live in the bigger more expensive cities. (Which ends up making it more likely people will have fewer kids)

I like to say, one kid is amateur. Two is professional. Three is at Master's level.

You have two hands in a parking lot. Two parents. Two sides on the sofa when reading. Two fit in the back seat.

Three, you need entirely new solutions for all that. And the cost goes up drastically.

Unless you've got triplets or twins + 1, three kids is a lot easier than two. They help each other out, work together, look out for each other, etc.

Some things are drastically more expensive, others are negligible. What annoys me the most is that most 5-passenger vehicles these days are actually just 4-passenger vehicles with an emergency-use-only 5th seatbelt. You're "supposed" to buy the 3-row 7/8 passenger SUV/Van. But then you have no cargo space because the third row seats aren't folded down.

What's wrong with Ford Galaxy, Volkswagen Touran or Sharan, Seat Alhambra ...?

Non-availability in the USA would be the main issue. But even then, those cars are fairly narrow and quickly become uncomfortable when your kids get older.

It's crazy, but a Ford F150 SuperCrew has pretty much the perfect passenger space; if only they would put something like that in a two-row wagon format.

I spent my childhood (as the oldest child of 3) in Ford Mondeo and later Renault Grand Scenic. Both were OK. Ford Galaxy is used as taxi in my city, it's great - it's wide enough to comfortably drive 5 adults.

Note that the difficulty curve is logistic, not exponential, because you are creating your own labor pool; older kids not only learn to take care of themselves, but can also be prevailed upon to look after their younger siblings.

There is an ultimate ceiling to the labor involved, because your oldest eventually move out; my parents raised eleven children, but the most they had in the house at once was nine.

Our rural neighbor had 13. Dad asked, how did you manage? She said When they get to 6 years old they can help.

With commitment, sacrifice, and ingenuity people do a good job of making more happen. Four and more are harder but very doable. Children are gifts that give back way more than they require. As a society we will be in very bad shape when we are old or needy and there are no children or siblings to care for us.

In the US a huge percentage of kids are raised by single parents, who some were also raised by single parents, and these families have no wealth and they are just another child away from destitution. It's actually so common you see AITA reddit threads about single parent grandmas are conflicted on how to support their single parent daughter and grandchildren and leads to all sorts of social problems. I come from a single parent household and it's clear to me what is lost by only having one half of your familial network available to you. It means your single parent has much less accountability in how they treat you and you have no where to branch out from your family if the only parent you have has an abusive or very small family.

Indeed, these are traps people are trying to get out of. Poverty is bad, being stuck with a kid for at least 18 years in poverty is worse. Avoid the gravity well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InYuJXzdAUI ("Children in an Era of Hyper Individuality and Late Stage Capitalism")

(also come from a single parent household, escaped the gravity well)

The old have colonialized the youth and the pension funds eat the children.

Nope nope nope.

People just don't want to have kids. Period. Because it sucks.

People had kids in the past because they had less contraceptives and alternatives. With those things, the universal revealed preference is to not have kids.

Biological Ponzi scheme? Always has been.

Raising asexual transhumans in pods (artificial wombs) in government facilities is the way forward.

That graph is impressively steep… ~18 million to ~9 million in ~6 years! That’s a massive cultural shift in a really short timescale, most birth rate changes are slow declines over decades. I wonder what changed in 2015 to start this ?

You should look at India’s. It goes from 6 kids per woman to 1.9 in under 30 years.

30 years is a generation, it’s a timescale that doesn’t surprise me as much given how much macro economic change there has been. 5 years feels like yesterday, and china is not materially different economically in that time AFAIK

The article says they actually got rid of the one child policy in 2015 thinking it would change the decline, but obviously it did not work that way.

It doesn't seem like China is any different from other modern country in this regard; fertility is on the decline almost everywhere. I've become fairly convinced that it's the fall of religion that has precipitated it - the "Death of God" as Nietzsche called it. Personally speaking, the thought of working a 996 style job (that could be mostly bullshit) all my life does not really inspire much desire to have children to perpetuate that economic meat-grinder. It'd be nice to think there was something more to life, but it seems illusive.

Massive expansion in tertiary capacity and increase in tertiary enrollment delaying births (25% in 2010 - 60% in 2022). I'd expect slow TFR rebound as the early cohorts finish school and settle into new jobs* in a few years, but still net decline in fertilitiy due to higher education. IMO not many educated or urbanized couples wants more than 2 kids.

That’s a really interesting insight!

https://archive.is/xCEWw

Irony reigns: More Than a Million Embryos Are in Cold Storage. What Should Happen to Them? https://archive.is/lGVsB

Does their demographic cliff have any implication on a war over Taiwan? I would imagine at the moment that China can't spare young people for the time being.

Well... China has a high man:woman sex ratio. Especially for young men. So unfortunately they do.

Currently, China mainland's population: 1.4 billion (inc. about 240 million under 15, apparently), Taiwan's population: 24 million.

They can almost literally throw millions of people at Taiwan if they want to, and will be able to do so for many years to come.

The point is that doing so would exacerbate their demographic cliff issue.

Considering the numbers I quoted, it would make little difference (which was the point of my reply).

When the issue is already manifest, the margins presumably matter. But either way, the point was just to align the reply with the original comment's point.

Dictatorships don't care. Look at Russia, it's much worse than China, Russia still suffers from ww2 losses. You can distract the people with a "good war". China has so many more people than Taiwan, they can waste a lot. What do they care, many of the leaders believe it's their destiny to be the world leader. That's not a unique view, a certain group of americans believe the same about the US too.

Après moi, le déluge

-King Louis XV of France to Madame de Pompadour, his favourite.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apr%C3%A8s_moi,_le_d%C3%A9luge

This all may be so. I have no strong opinion on if they will or will not 'waste' their population. But it seems you and others are not addressing the subject issue of the demographic cliff. That point of the demographic cliff is that there are a surplus of old people and a deficit of young (economically productive) people to sustain those old people. Comparison to the population of Taiwan or others are irrelevant in a sense.

TW has worse fertility than PRC at any rate.

Arguably it's the opposite - "surplus males" or "bare branches" are a problem which warfare fixes.

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/our-security-threatened-t...

https://kar.kent.ac.uk/11430/1/surplus_men_IS_article.pdf

But also most of families are single-child ended. So every causality in such war would be end of only baby which family had. This could stir up some unrest.

I think that would depend on how China expects the conflict to go. If they're expecting a USSR-Afghanistan-style conflict, dealing with several generations of war-broken and missing men seems like a disincentive. If they're expecting a Desert Storm-style conflict, I doubt demographics play much of a role at all.

I think the Chinese perspectives of how a war against Taiwan might proceed was dramatically altered after watching Russia get slapped around by Ukraine. I'm convinced it delayed any aggressive move by China against Taiwan by a decade, if not more.

We've got to make it 10 years from now for demographic change.

Great fictional book about a possible 2024 era war, "2034: A Novel of the Next World War", Novel by Elliot Ackerman and James G. Stavridis. It's much more realistic than other novels. China sinks multiple aircraft carriers, they completely hack the us and turn off the power and telecommunications. Then the shit hits the fan. Maybe a limited nuclear exchange will scare the other side, the us and china start thinking.

There is a theory that the US loses every prolonged conflict by default, because taxpayers eventually lose interest in winning.

China is probably watching the latest developments in US support for Ukraine with great interest. If the support proves insufficient for Ukraine to win, they may conclude that there is no need for a proper invasion of Taiwan. That there is no need for an all-out war. They could just isolate the island, try to shoot down every plane and sink every ship, and take whatever casualties Americans are willing to take. If their navy and air force can match their US counterparts, they just need to spend more and last longer.

Ukraine is (and will continue to be for decades) a fascinating case study for multiple reasons, but most impressively regarding NATO support. Although headlines detail billions upon billions in spending, the vast majority of those expenditures from the NATO side were for the notional values of stuff that was already just sitting around. This has got to be one if the cheapest conflicts--from a taxpayer perspective--they've ever supported, which is amazing considering the success Ukraine has experienced in bringing Russia's military to its metaphorical knees.

I think China would be far more aggressive with Taiwan if the West hadn't frozen Russia's central bank assets. That single move likely had the biggest impact in curtailing any expansionist dreams.

I think the 1 Child Policy means that China is a paper tiger. Every single casualty is the end of a Chinese family (more or less) - and this is in a culture that already strongly privileges male heirs

PRC's huge population denominator will still generate more fresh bodies per year to sustain modern war against any adversary. Especially against TW with even worse demographic trend. They face same recruitment issue as US - not enough technical talent wants to go into military to operate all the complex hardware that requires increasingly less manning. But in event of war, there's endless bodies to draft from.

It’s an authoritarian state. They could actually just effectively mandate that each woman has to have two kids if medically possible.

I don't think it's that easy. To borrow a quote: "too simple, sometimes naive."

It is that easy. Why wouldn’t it be? It would be as simple as extra taxation if you don’t have two kids.

As a man, I'm not capable of having kids, so it seems a bit unfair to me.

Sure, the law accounts for medical problems in both parties. That’s just pedantic though.

There is no medical problem and there is no other party; as a man, I'm not capable of making children, no matter how much of a tax penalty you apply to me.

It applies to families obviously. Like the tax code for the one child policy, there’s precedent for this.

Well, if you want less family formation, then taxing it seems like a good start, but I think contrary to the goal here being discussed here.

I've kind of been down this thread a bit and I think heavy taxes on birth control might be the intervention that a pro-natalist authoritarian government might go for. Reading the article, it does sound like China is trying to tweak these levers. But at the end of the day, if you don't have a society that women are interested in raising children in, then I think it's just going to be very difficult.

That's the obvious thing they'd want to do, but the thing is.. we're talking about human beings here. What are the unintended consequences of this policy? Could this cause discontent that could threaten the existence of the CCP? etc etc

We can't forget that the only reason we're in this mess is because of the success of the one child policy, but could the CCP replicate this success when it comes to nudging families to have even more burdens? I don't think so.

The CCP really don't want another Tienanmen Square and bend to public opinion when necessary, e.g. the ending of lockdown. Given that a lot of Chinese women feel strongly about this, their government can still prod them a bit, but too much pressure would damage the broader legitimacy of the system.

Would it? In a society that heavily biases men and within which men outnumber women by a massive number? Surely more than enough dudes would think, even if they'd never sniff the possibility themselves, that such an act would be "setting things right". We see such an action from a distance with respect to "alpha male" social media content in the US, most guys consuming it won't come close to the opportunities it dangles at the end of the rainbow but that don't stop them from endorsing the implied ideas in such content.

It seems curbing natality is the easy part, despite all doomerism around population explosion. To raise it back when needed not so simple.

Why is it needed? Who decides, and what if they are wrong?

The only reasons I saw given were: 1) it's a Confucian duty, 2) "Soldiers win battles", and 3) "Let’s extend the Chinese bloodline", none of which sound all the convincing to me, a non-Chinese person.

A dwindling labour force is a problem for any nation.

I would assume automation eases that quite a bit.

No, automation gains go to the few, everyone else must work harder now since their labor is worth less.

Despite all the hype lately, automation nowadays is still crude and expensive compared to a human.

The real reasons are almost certainly economic in nature and supported with some degree of rigor and data.

Also of course "let's extend the Chinese bloodline" doesn't sound convincing to you as a non-Chinese person, why should it lol

My point is the article doesn't give much in the way of reasons for why Chinese women should want to have more babies, while Qem argues it's needed. Sure, there might be a "degree of rigor and data", but what is the data and how convincing is it?

I wrote what I did to show how ignorant I am of the topic, not to argue the viewpoint wasn't convincing to its intended audience.

So, is an appeal to bloodline really that influential to Chinese women in their 20s?

Based on the article and its linked-to related articles, it is not influential, not even in rural areas. For example, https://archive.is/MjbKJ , says the cost of rearing a child and difficulty in securing a steady income are far more important to people in their 20s.

4) somebody needs to pay the rents of hundreds of millions of retirees

That isn't sustainable, better to cut the cord now than after we crack 10 billion humans on Earth.

I did a careful read to find the three points I listed. Where is this fourth one given? I can't find it, so I assume you read it elsewhere?

> Why is it needed? Who decides, and what if they are wrong?

https://chinapower.csis.org/china-demographics-challenges/

Which seems to say that the Chinese government wants cheap workers for its economy, both as industrial workers and as health care for the elderly.

Is that really what's supposed to influence Chinese women to change their minds?

Is that why you think China needs to quickly increase its natality?

What if you and the Politburo are wrong, and the increase is best put off for another generation while China switches to a more culture which doesn't regard "women's labor" as free and instead pays more for socialized childcare and elder care?

Waiting would also make housing cheaper, which would make it more affordable to raise children.

It's easy for me to believe the interests of military, factory, and building concerns are overly represented in the call for raising the birth rate now, instead of waiting.

If we want to address climate change, we have to acknowledge that having children is the most environmentally destructive action you can possibly take. The message governments should be sending is "don't have children." 8 billion is too many. I heard from somewhere that if everybody on Earth lived a first world lifestyle, we would quickly deplete all of the available resources.

Population decline is our chance to rebalance ourselves with nature.

Source: “I heard from somewhere”

We're doing it already without everyone living a first-world lifestyle, so whilst the source isn't cited, it's highly likely.

There are more efficient ways to get our needed energy, wind, water, solar. In the US we are up to 20% using this (and 20% nuclear). In other countries they will be able to transition to solar, as it will only get cheaper and cheaper. Electric vehicles will also further reduce emissions. Electricity to head and cool your home from primarily green sources will mean your personal emissions will go down.

The hard thing to calculate is the net impact over time. But imagine someone in a poorer country that burns wood or coal, their electric sources are those too. They can increase their energy usage and actually improve their greenhouse gas impact.

There's no panacea but we can get there.

Please read the Guidelines for commenting on this site

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The opposite is true, considering your audience. In order to improve the environment those who can raise newborns with first-world nutrition, care, and education need to have more children.

The economic efficiency and technological leaps that come with increasing the number of productive people would mitigate, slow, and potentially reverse climate change much more than surrendering the world to those who refine metals by mixing mercury over burning tires and will continue to reproduce without care for Malthusian handwringing.

Note how the US reduced carbon emissions despite an increasing fertile population and concurrent deregulation. While others who focused only on limiting their status quo increased emissions. Human society is dynamic, not static, and linear projections and limits do not play out so simply.

This is a very optimistic viewpoint. You are making out climate change to be a technology problem when in reality it's a political problem. Bringing more people into the world to do more climate research isn't going to help. There are billions of people out there that want what we have and have no regard for the climate. They'll burn as much coal and slash as many forests as they need to get there.

> having children is the most environmentally destructive action you can possibly take

I find the argument a little facile, because in that framework there is actually an even greater environmentally-destructive action... Deciding not to commit suicide.

Suicide is traumatic. Not having children is not. Your point is also somewhat incorrect. By committing suicide you only reduce your carbon footprint by however many years you have left to live. Not having a child however prevents a whole lifetime of carbon emissions. Lifespans are increasing so that's another factor to account for.

> Suicide is traumatic.

Why is that suddenly important now? So it wasn't really about environmental impact, but about environmental impact implicitly modified by personal convenience and comfort? That's not what it sounded like.

> By committing suicide you only reduce your carbon footprint by however many years you have left to live. Not having a child however

With very few exceptions, a choice of dying today means someone will not beget any progeny on any subsequent day.

So no, unless you are suggesting some kind of death by snoo-snoo or tube-baby-farm scenario, shuffling off this mortal coil already encompasses the "no further children" choice and broadens the human-removing even further.

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