In early December 2021, the Financial Associated Press reported that according to data released by the Korea Statistics Agency, the total population of South Korea in 2021 was 51.57 million, a decrease of 90,000 people compared with 2020, which means that south Korea's population has officially experienced "negative growth". At that time, many experts and media bluntly warned: Our country should pay close attention to the introduction of policies to encourage fertility and make full preparations, otherwise it is likely to follow in the footsteps of South Korea.
There are two reasons: on the one hand, the current fertility rate on the mainland is only 1.15, which is comparable to that of South Korea (the fertility rate is 1.1), far below the international warning line of 1.5; on the other hand, in South Korea, when the best time to encourage fertility has passed, even if the country gives a large amount of cash to young people, they will not be willing to have children.
In fact, in the past two years, many experts have bluntly predicted that in the fastest 5 years, the mainland will also enter the "negative population growth" stage. Especially when in September 2021, 15 provinces and cities have successively announced the birth population in the first half of the year, and the comprehensive birth rate has fallen by more than 18%, and many authoritative experts predict that the birth rate of the mainland will fall sharply again in 2021.
On January 17, 2022, the National Bureau of Statistics released population data for 2021. There is no suspense that the birth population in 2021 has dropped again - in 2021, the mainland birth population is 10.62 million, 480,000 fewer than in 2020, the death population is 10.14 million, and the annual natural growth rate of the mainland population is approaching the era of zero growth. It is worth mentioning that in 2016, the "comprehensive two-child" policy was introduced, and the birth population rebounded slightly, and in the following 5 years (2017-2021), the mainland birth population has "dropped for 5 consecutive years".
Population expert Liang Jianzhang predicts that if measures to encourage fertility are not taken urgently, the number of births on the mainland will reach 9.98 million in 2022, which means that the mainland's population will have "negative growth" in 2022, which is about 4 years earlier than expected. By 2050, it will be reduced to 1.264 billion, and by 2100, the Chinese will fall to 685 million, and the proportion of the world will fall from 18% today to 6.5%. Liang Jianzhang said bluntly, "According to this trend, the demographic advantage accumulated by the Chinese nation for thousands of years will be lost within 100 years." ”
How should we view the demographic situation on the mainland? Economists believe that the situation is already very serious. In addition, He Dan, director of the Chinese and Development Research Center, also said in an interview with the surging news reporter that the mainland's population situation should arouse "great attention", because if the fertility level changes too much, the size of the birth population will be greatly reduced, which will have a major impact on the economy and society, which is not conducive to the mainland adjusting relevant economic and social policies to actively cope with population changes.
However, judging from the comments we observe netizens, it seems that many people are very happy to see the mainland 'population plummeting' – a common perception among netizens is that the smaller the population, the better, so that the quality of residents will be greatly improved, and not only will it be easier to find jobs in the future, but also higher wages. There are also comparisons with the United States: the United States has only 330 million people, but in 2020 it generated a GDP of 20.94 trillion US dollars, 5 trillion more than me.
Is this really the case? The answer is no. First of all, many people ignore a very serious fact, that is, the degree of aging in the mainland is equally serious: in 2021, the proportion of the mainland population aged 65 and above will exceed 14%, and more than 7% will already enter the aging society. Many scholars believe that the mainland has entered a "deeply aging society". The direct consequence of aging is that the pressure on the social pension is further highlighted - the financial supply pressure of the pension will be quite large, and the family and society are facing the impact of the risk of the old-age pension. In the future, the number of elderly people living alone in empty nests will further increase, which will bring about serious social problems;
Secondly, in 2021, the per capita disposable income of residents in the mainland will only be 35,128 yuan, while the per capita consumption expenditure of residents in the country will be as high as 24,100 yuan in 2021. In other words, the per capita balance is only 11,028 yuan. Combined with the current situation of "deep aging" in the mainland, in summary, the national conditions of the mainland are "getting old before getting rich";
Moreover, China is still a developing country, and all walks of life need a certain amount of labor to reduce costs. As Liang Jianzhang said, in the past four decades, the mainland has been eating the "demographic dividend". Therefore, for the developing continent, population is a very important factor, which directly or indirectly leads to the shrinking labor force, the acceleration of aging, the imminent peak of the population, the disappearance of the demographic dividend, and the serious problem of leftover men.
Summing up in one sentence, the "population alarm" of the mainland in the current period has actually been sounded. This is not only the common understanding of the academic community, but also an issue that has attracted great attention at the national level – we have seen that in order to actively cope with the continuous deepening of the aging of the population and the decline of the birth population year by year, the state has officially issued the "three-child birth policy" on May 31, 2021: the implementation of a new policy rule that a couple can have three children.
But unfortunately, the effect of the three-child policy is not good, and there are two points that can be proved: First, the results of the "questionnaire on the three-child birth policy" released by Changzhou show that in the future, even with the strong support of the three-child policy, the "willingness to have another child" is not high: the proportion of "strong willingness" is only 4.29%, and more than 95% of people are "confused" or "unwilling to have children"; second, the survey results of the agency show that only 8.1% of the families with two existing children are willing to have three children in 2022. 80.64% explicitly expressed their reluctance, and 11.26% did not think well. Among them, the four first-tier cities have the lowest willingness to have three children.
In summary, I thought that after the introduction of the "three-child policy", the willingness of young people to have children will be greatly improved, but who ever thought, the results are not satisfactory, failed to reverse the decline. Big cities, in particular, play very little role.
Why is this happening? Why do young people still reluctant to have children when the state encourages childbearing? Liang Jianzhang believes that the main reasons are as follows:
First, do not want to be born. The employment rate and education level of Chinese women have generally increased, the former inhibiting women's desire to have children and bringing up children - even basic women's post-childbirth jobs can not be guaranteed; the latter has completely reversed the traditional idea of "having more children", and more and more women are unwilling to have more children;
Second, they dare not be born and cannot afford to be born. The main factors given by authoritative institutions such as the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences to inhibit fertility are housing pressure, high education expenditure and medical pressure. Focusing on housing pressure, housing expenditure in China's big cities basically accounts for more than 70% of the wage income of an ordinary working class – in December 2021, the average price of 100 cities was as high as 16,000 yuan / square, which means that the threshold for buying a 100 square meter house has been raised to 1.6 million. As mentioned earlier, in 2021, the per capita balance of residents is only 11,000, and it will take at least 43 years to save 480,000 down payments, even if a family of three works together, it will take 14 years. This does not include the monthly payment of 6,000 yuan per month for the next 30 years. A series of expenses such as decoration after buying a house, buying furniture, getting married, buying a car, etc., cannot be calculated. Such a huge expenditure will greatly suppress the willingness of urban couples to have children;
Third, no one brings it, in other words, "care difficulties". On the one hand, family care is gradually in a dilemma, one of the parents with a baby full-time, the source of family income will be greatly reduced, will affect the basic expenses of the family, the quality of life of children will be greatly reduced; on the other hand, the lack of social childcare resources, compared with other countries, the mainland is a shortage of nurseries. Surveys show that the enrolment rate of infants and young children aged 0 to 3 in various types of childcare institutions is only 4%, far lower than the 50% ratio in some developed countries.
Among the many factors that inhibit fertility, the high cost of housing is the most important, and it is the key reason that causes young people to "lie flat" - house prices are too high, relying on wage income is basically not enough to make up for the 30% down payment of the house, can not afford to buy a house, the mother-in-law does not agree to marry a daughter, and young people are not even realistic to get married. Therefore, some young people simply give up the struggle and are willing to be a lonely person. This is more common in large cities. In the eyes of industry insiders, helping young people solve housing problems, many problems will be solved.
In addition, the central media editorial also believes that "alleviating the housing problem in large cities to boost the fertility rate of residents": if the housing problem in large cities can be successfully solved, so that young people, especially new residents, can live happily, it will not only be conducive to the sustainable development and activity of the economy, but also resolve an important factor restricting the fertility rate of the urban population.
The effect of the three-child policy is not good, after the birth population has dropped for 5 consecutive years, the state has finally used the big move of "housing", which is embodied in three aspects: First, from the second half of 2021, it will really regulate the property market, stabilize house prices, and maximize the protection of the interests of buyers who just need to buy houses. In particular, the continuous tightening of credit policies has made a number of housing enterprises actively reduce debt and reduce prices to promote the sale of houses. It not only flattens the house price, but also benefits the buyers who just need it. Of course, the main change is that from July 2021, house prices have really fallen – according to the National Bureau of Statistics, the range of cities in which the prices of new and second-hand houses in 70 large and medium-sized cities have fallen gradually expanded from July to December. In addition, the average sales price of commercial housing in October, November and December 2021 returned to "within 10,000 yuan";
Second, on July 21, 2021, the state issued the "Three-Child Birth Support Measures", which has clear requirements for housing policies: when allocating public rental housing, local governments can give appropriate care to families that meet the local housing security conditions and have minor children according to the number of minor children in terms of household type selection;
Third, all provinces and cities responded immediately and implemented policies such as housing subsidies. Up to now, Beijing, Shaanxi, Guangdong and other places have given support to two-child and three-child families in various forms of housing policies: 1. Beijing, Guangdong and other places have clearly proposed to give priority to public rental housing; 2, Jiangsu Hai'an City, Gansu Zhangye City Linze County to provide housing subsidies, of which Linze County can receive up to 100,000 yuan after giving birth to three children; Ningbo City, Zhejiang Province, stipulates that families with two or three children, who have paid the housing provident fund for 2 consecutive years, apply for a provident fund loan for the first time to purchase the first set of self-occupied housing, The maximum loan amount of housing provident fund has been increased from 600,000 yuan per household to 800,000 yuan per household. In addition, Guizhou, Anhui and Jilin have also formulated differentiated preferential policies for families with many children to purchase houses.
Can the purpose of "spawning" be achieved by simply using the big trick of the house? The effect is definitely there, but it won't be too obvious. Because based on the analysis of the previous article, the factors that inhibit fertility are multifaceted, such as fertility, feeding, nurturing, and care. Therefore, "encouraging fertility" is a systematic plan, which needs to be aimed at the various "pain points" that parents do not have children at present, so as to alleviate the burden of family fertility and nurturing and relieve the worries of family fertility.
Ma Guangyuan proposed a plan to promote the birth, and his parents agreed
Ma Guangyuan's December 2, 2021 publication titled "Ma Guangyuan: What Kind of Incentive Policies Will Make People Have Children?" The article bluntly said that the current policy introduced by various places is still not enough, more than a few days of maternity leave, parental leave, a month of subsidies a little money, will not completely change everyone's habit of not having children. The cost of the child from birth to maintenance, this account is not something that can be changed in a few days of vacation.
So, how can we encourage everyone to have children? Ma Guangyuan put forward a set of systematic, reasonable and feasible "spawning plan", which we summarized mainly included 4 aspects:
1. Reduce the education expenditure of children, and consider the inclusion of preschool education in the compulsory education system. This is to solve the "pain point" of high education costs;
2. In terms of housing, the real support policy is given to families with two or three children, such as unconditionally providing public rental housing with very low rent for the birth of three children, and at the same time giving certain preferential purchase preferences and loan interest rates to purchase commercial houses. This is to solve the high cost of housing "pain points";
3, really reduce the burden of young people having children, such as the implementation of a full reimbursement system for the hospitalization costs of giving birth to children, and truly achieve "all free" for children;
4. Eliminate the outdated concept of "more children is a burden", encourage and guide young people to take the initiative to have children, and eliminate everyone's fertility anxiety. At the same time, it is necessary to improve basic supporting facilities such as childcare.
Ma Guangyuan believes that encouraging fertility really cannot be delayed and delayed any longer, and the time is not waiting. We have missed a good opportunity - when the two-child policy is implemented, we should increase our efforts, but unfortunately we underestimated the demographic situation at that time, otherwise there would not be such a passive situation as it is today.
For Ma Guangyuan's proposed birth plan, parents agree - before publishing the article, the author has done a survey, asked 50 pairs of parents' opinions, the result is that everyone unanimously agrees with Ma Guangyuan's plan, the plan can really be implemented, 50 pairs of parents have expressed their willingness to have one more child, of which 3 pairs of one-child parents and 5 pairs of two-child parents said that they can consider having three children, but the premise is that the policy support is large enough.
In the eyes of professionals, it is not surprising that Ma Guangyuan's birth plan can get the approval of parents, because each of these measures has poked at the "pain points" of parents, and housing, education, and care are the key factors hindering young people's fertility.
Some people may ask, can the plan proposed by Ma Guangyuan really be fully implemented in the future? Our answer is yes. As Interface News Zhao Meng said, having children and raising children is both a family affair and a state affair, and the new population is the future of innovative entrepreneurs, consumers, taxpayers, pension providers, who are contributing to society, and society should share the cost of parenting accordingly. The state should be willing to invest, take out real money and silver, effectively reduce the burden of raising families, strengthen public services to encourage childbearing, and make the people willing to have children and be able to raise children.