Commentary: China’s three-child policy won’t fix its fertility problem
IRVINE, California: In an effort to address rapid population ageing, China has just announced that information technology volition let all families to have up to three children.
The conclusion comes on the heels of widely publicised new information showing that the Chinese fertility charge per unit in 2022 was only 1.iii per woman, which is similar to that of Japan (1.36 in 2019) and notably lower than that of the The states (1.7).
But a beneath-replacement fertility charge per unit is only one part of Mainland china's demographic problem. A second consequence is the sheer size of its older population. Before 1971, Chinese family-planning policies were pro-natal, restricting access to contraceptives and family-planning education.
Equally a result, the land's current or soon-to-be elderly population has grown particularly large: The size of the population aged 15-24 is only around 72 per cent that of those aged 45-54, compared to 79 per cent in Nippon and 100 per cent in the US.
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This pinnacle-heavy demographic structure makes the problem of declining fertility even more acute, because new, younger workers are needed to replace those who volition retire and require support.
A third outcome is urban-rural inequality. China'due south rural population is generally prohibited from moving to urban areas by the land's hukou system of residency permits. Rural residents thus have had fewer opportunities to access education and health care.
In 2010-2012, the urban enrollment rate was 100 per cent for centre school, 63 per cent for loftier school, and 54 per cent for university; in rural areas, it was 70 per cent, 3 per cent, and 2 per cent, respectively.
Likewise, urban areas had ii.68 doctors per 1,000 people in 2008, compared to but 1.26 per 1,000 people in rural areas. Not surprisingly, rural areas endure worse health outcomes, with lower life expectancy and higher morbidity rates than in urban areas.
Chinese policymakers tend to discuss each of these problems separately. But that is a fault. Low fertility, the legacy of pro-natal policies, and rural-urban divides all bear upon a population-age structure that has a direct begetting on Cathay's long-run economic evolution.
SOCIETAL PRESSURES Come up TO BEAR
Economic growth depends heavily on the quality of the labour strength. If workers cannot admission health intendance or acquire skills in school or on the task, the economy will suffer. Worldwide, differences in worker quality tin explicate around half of all cross-country differences in income and growth.
Telling Chinese couples that they may accept three children will not automatically increase the fertility rate, nor will information technology necessarily help with the larger economic challenge. Fertility is determined by socioeconomic factors such as the cost of raising children and the economical opportunities that parents foresee for their offspring.
Those costs are extraordinarily loftier in urban China, where residential real estate is more than expensive than in any other country at a similar income level.
Moreover, academic competition is intense. Children and their parents begin feeling the pressure level of the nationwide gaokao exam for university access in master school.
A 1999 reform that expanded the number of university slots could have partly relieved this pressure, except that chore growth has not kept up; unemployment rates for college graduates take duly increased.
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Urban parents also face up the brunt of caring for their own ageing parents. This is no small task in a country where pensions are limited, and where few people motion to retirement communities later in life.
Most ageing Chinese expect their adult children to care for them. And considering the 1-child policy in place from 1979 to 2022 was enforced more strictly in urban areas, almost young urban parents grew up as only children.
With no siblings to share the load, couples can look to spend the adjacent i or two decades caring for iv ageing parents in improver to rearing their own child. Adding two more children would increment the average couple's dependents from five to seven.
RURAL AREAS FARE Amend
By contrast, fertility is higher in rural areas, and the cost of rearing children is lower. Housing is cheaper, and the fact that there are fewer schooling opportunities means that parents can worry less about the costs of education.
Rural Chinese of childbearing age are much more than likely to have siblings with whom they can work together in caring for elderly parents.
Under these circumstances, allowing families to have three children without also making other changes would probable not achieve the intended economic event, and could even make things worse.
With the urban population unlikely to accept many more children unless the financial burdens of kid-rearing and elder care are reduced, it is just rural fertility that will increase.
And without improvements in rural wellness and teaching, the size and share of the unskilled working population will abound.
A labour force with a growing share of unskilled workers is the last thing China needs as information technology strives to push the frontiers of technological innovation and advance beyond center-income status. While improving schools and public health in rural areas is straightforward (albeit expensive), generating employment for the graduates volition be much more difficult.
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And without employment, young people will non be able to help support the ageing population.
Chinese policymakers have shown sensation of some of these issues. In addition to increasing the fertility limit, they have best-selling the need to reduce housing costs and to provide instruction subsidies.
Only these proposals remain vague, because there really are no uncomplicated solutions. Chinese policymakers will need to exist mindful of the economic ramifications of the country's demographic trends in tandem with its rural-urban divide – and have care to avoid making a difficult problem worse.
Nancy Qian is Professor of Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Direction and Director of China Lab.
Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/commentary-chinas-three-child-policy-wont-fix-its-fertility-problem-282491
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