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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ?
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.
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
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
Readit News
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/our-security-threatened-t...
https://kar.kent.ac.uk/11430/1/surplus_men_IS_article.pdf
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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.
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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.
https://chinapower.csis.org/china-demographics-challenges/
Also of course "let's extend the Chinese bloodline" doesn't sound convincing to you as a non-Chinese person, why should it lol
Population decline is our chance to rebalance ourselves with nature.
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.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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.
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