China has entered an aging society, with 267 million elderly people over the age of 60 on the mainland by the end of last year, and experts expect to exceed 300 million by 2025. On the other hand, the young population is getting smaller and smaller, and since the mainland liberalized the two-child policy in 2016, the number of domestic newborn births has been declining, and has achieved four consecutive years of decline. From 17.28 million in 2017, it dropped to 12 million in 2020.
By 2021, the mainland announced the liberalization of the three-child policy, but the annual birth population was 10.62 million, and the birth rate was only 7.52 ‰. According to expert estimates, once the population birth rate has formed a downward trend, it is very difficult to reverse, and the mainland population may also have negative growth in the future, while the birth rates of Japan, South Korea and other countries have already experienced negative growth. Judging from the current situation, there are three main reasons for the continuous decline in the fertility rate on the mainland:
First, high house prices, house prices are too high, young couples have used money to repay the mortgage, there is not much money to raise the second child, the third child. At the same time, raising a second child and a third child need to have enough room for activities, and now everyone is very difficult to buy a house, and it is even more difficult to buy a big house.
Second, the cost of raising a baby has always been high, raising children in education, medical care and other aspects of the expenditure is very large, raising a child to at least 570,000 yuan, more children can not afford to afford economically. Third, many working women are now reluctant to have more children in order to have a job, because it means investing more time in caring for their families, and their careers are likely to end.
However, in order to increase the birth rate of the mainland population, avoid negative population growth, and delay the process of aging of domestic society, some experts and scholars have also made suggestions and suggestions, and the "new plan" proposed by experts represented by Professor Ren Zeping mainly starts from the following four aspects:
First, for families with two or three children, cash rewards are given, and the specific plan is that for families with two or three children, each child should receive a monthly economic subsidy of 1,000 yuan until the child reaches adulthood. This can alleviate the financial pressure of families with two or three children. This proposal has been implemented in Panzhihua City, Sichuan Province, on the mainland, with a monthly subsidy of 500 yuan for families with more than two children.
Second, Ren Zeping believes that 50% of the mortgage interest should be returned to the second-child family, and the mortgage of the three-child family should be exempted. In addition, on the basis of the original house price, discount subsidies are provided to families with two or three children who buy a house. However, we believe that the strength of this proposal still seems to be insufficient, in addition to reducing high house prices, the government should also introduce more condominium housing, and exempt families with more than two children from 50% of the mortgage interest, so as to stimulate the enthusiasm of young people for childbearing.
Third, continue to deepen education reform. Ren Zeping suggested increasing the number of nurseries and public kindergartens, improving the quality of children's education, so that young people no longer worry about the problem of children's childcare after giving birth to a second or third child, then in this case, many young families are also willing to have a second and third child.
Fourth, it is necessary to appropriately "take care" of the families of the second and third children in terms of medical care and education. Many young families spend heavily on health care and education after having a second or third child. Therefore, the expenditure on medical and educational expenses for families with more than two children should be appropriately reduced to alleviate their economic pressure. In this case, the desire of young people to have children will also increase significantly.
In the face of the "new plan" proposed by experts represented by Professor Ren Zeping, many young couples expressed their approval, and all sectors of society also expressed their affirmation. Because, from the housing, education, medical care, economy and other aspects of the family to give encouragement to have more than two children. According to Professor Ren Zeping, the state should invest 5% of GDP every year to encourage everyone to have children, if this plan can really be implemented, the fertility rate on the mainland will definitely rebound, but this is also a big capital investment, and it will be difficult to implement it in practice.