01
A while ago, I saw several cities do a questionnaire survey on fertility issues, and the concept of "birth subsidy" was invariably mentioned.
Taking the "Zhejiang Province Under 3 Years of Age Infant and Child Raising Cost Questionnaire" as an example, it is very straightforward to ask,
"Suppose the government subsidizes the birth of two/three children by 1,000 yuan per month (from the time of birth to 3 years old), are you willing to have a second/third child?"
The Hainan Provincial Health Commission raised similar questions, except that the hypothetical subsidy amount was reduced from 1,000 yuan to 500 yuan.
There are also cities that directly put the hypothesis into practice.
There is a place called Huangzhugen Natural Village in Guangdong, which directly issued a notice that as long as there is a child, each child can receive at least 3,000 yuan per month, until the age of two and a half, that is, 90,000 yuan.
In Panzhihua, Sichuan, after the birth of the second child, each family can receive 500 yuan per month as a child-rearing subsidy until the child is 3 years old.
In other words, you can receive a total of 18,000 yuan in subsidies.
There is also Gansu Linze, which also proposes to provide subsidies for local families with two and three children, ranging from 5,000 a year to 10,000, which can be received for three years.
In addition to cash subsidies, Gansu Linze will also directly provide 40,000 yuan of housing subsidies as a supporting policy.
Jiangsu Haian also has a policy that families with two and three children can get certain preferential house prices when buying a house.
These preferences and subsidies clearly point to one purpose,
-- Promoting fertility.
Many people are not optimistic about this policy.
Taking the 1,000 pieces mentioned in the Zhejiang questionnaire as a standard, some people think that it is only enough to raise a cat.
Some parents have come forward to say that the milk powder money is not enough, and they can only buy diapers.
It is widely believed that meager subsidies are not enough to cover the cost of childbirth.
Some people say bluntly that it is better to subsidize until the age of 18.
Some netizens said that there must be a suite, free education, free medical treatment, and only then will they consider having children.
Looking closely at these comments, it is not difficult to find a problem, the birth subsidy itself is not exclusive, and everyone is more concerned about "how much to make up and how long to make up".
02
Let's start with a rough calculation.
Counting from the stage of pregnancy.
After pregnancy, the general top three hospitals implement ten obstetric examination procedures, including B ultrasound, blood test, Tang screening, glucose tolerance and the like, and this part of the cost alone is expected to range from 3,000 to 5,000.
This is still no surprise. If the data is not good, it may also need to be combined with other diagnostic methods, and the cost will only be higher.
There is also childbirth, go to the ordinary women's and children's hospital, the cost of natural delivery is about three or four thousand, depending on the region, there are fluctuations, if the caesarean section may double.
There are other costs during pregnancy, such as supplementary nutrition and medicines, as well as maternity supplies, each of which costs money.
After giving birth to a child, you don't just need to spend money on the child, the mother's body also needs to be nurtured, otherwise it is easy to leave hidden dangers.
The popular confinement center, which is better, costs tens of millions of dollars a month, and not every family can afford it.
The above adds up, and then save thousands of small ten thousand, if you want to pursue good conditions, there is no upper limit.
Look at the kids again.
Most of the childcare subsidies in the aforementioned policies are received at the 0-3 year old stage, and everyone mentioned that more expenses are diapers and milk powder.
I went to find some parents to say, generally in the newborn stage of the use of diapers is more, a day to ten tablets, and then slowly reduced.
On average, babies do not wet with 6-8 tablets a day, and for the convenience of calculation, a month is calculated as 200 tablets.
Casually searched the price, a piece of diaper is almost 1.5 yuan, calculating the cost of a month, about 300 yuan.
There is also milk powder.
I found a well-circulated guide to drinking milk, and I can see that the average amount of milk that a child drinks is about 800 ml.
If breastfeeding is not considered, according to this 4.5g milk powder with 30ml of water brewing advice, almost a day needs 100g of milk powder, a month is almost 3kg.
Taking the price of this piece of milk powder as a reference, 380g needs 170 yuan, and about 8 cans a month, that is, 1360 yuan.
Children grow fast, newborn clothes update that is set after set, even if you buy cheap, even to each month, you have to get hundreds of dollars.
This does not add to the cost of nutritional supplements and daily care products for children.
However, in reality, most mothers will still breastfeed mainly, supplemented by milk powder feeding, and there will be some fluctuations in the cost, and overall, at least one or two thousand per month.
After the child is 1 year old, the use of diapers and milk powder will decrease, but complementary foods need to be added.
In addition, many parents will begin to consider early education, which is difficult to measure by standards.
When the children are a little older, education spending becomes dominant.
This is the charging standard of public kindergartens in Guangzhou last year, and the minimum is more than 300 per month, not counting food and evening care.
Private kindergartens are more expensive.
This is the cost in Xinjiang, there is a gap in the upper limit, but the lower limit is relatively consistent, which shows that it is already a very necessary expenditure.
This is just basic education.
Now children are eager to learn the eighteen martial arts from an early age, and what language classes, talent classes, and interest classes have all begun to practice from an early age.
The fees for different levels and different regions of this kind of course vary greatly, but they are not cheap.
I have a little nephew, in the eighteen-line small county, reading kindergarten, every weekend to learn to draw, is the most common kind of color brush painting, the teacher does not teach much, that is, comment on it, give some advice and guidance.
For this kind of interest class with no dry goods, it takes two or three hundred in a semester. If you learn piano lessons, violin, etc., the cost is even higher, and there is no end.
Don't say that the parents chicken baby, after all, no one wants their children to lose at the starting line, and they can only spend money and pull from an early age.
In this way, the most basic and most basic cost of education in a year is about three thousand, generally doubling, and other books, nutrition, clothing, bits and pieces together are easily tens of thousands.
In this way, all the way to college, counting the tuition and living expenses that fluctuate a lot, conservatively estimated, two or three hundred thousand is indispensable.
If you still want to go to graduate school and go abroad, you will spend more.
This table circulating on the Internet is more than I calculated.
In addition to these overt overheads, there are also some hidden ones.
To take the most direct example, a two-bedroom family, two bedrooms is enough, but after giving birth to a child, especially the second and third children, the two-bedroom room is crowded, often need to replace the larger. Now the house price everyone understands, changing a large house is also a big expense.
In addition, after the birth of the child, it always needs to be taken care of.
If there are elderly people in the family to help, it is better, but if not, you have to take care of yourself, always have to sacrifice part or all of the work, obviously will bring about a decline in income.
If you don't want to do this, you can only ask your aunt for help. Good aunts in the city can earn tens of thousands of dollars a month, and ordinary small cities also have thousands, all of which are places that cost money.
When the child can go out to study, don't feel that your burden is reduced, every day to pick up and drop off school, check homework, tutor homework, are all time and energy, and it is even likely to need their own work to make concessions, to accommodate the child's time.
If you don't want to spend it, then spend money on a tutor, anyway, there is always one item to spend on time and money.
Entertainment needs such as tourism have not been considered here, but even so, if you enumerate them bit by bit, you will find that there are too many places to spend money and energy, and each of them is the cost of childbearing.
I think of the end of "The Richest Man in Xihong", Wang Duoyu was preparing to donate his 30 billion inheritance, only to suddenly find that his wife was pregnant.
He thought about how much he still had to leave a point for the child, and then calculated a bill that was several meters long.
"Once a child is born, he has to have a wife, diapers, suction sticks, teething sticks, milk powder, fruit puree, meat puree...
"Kids grow up, piano, swimming, roller skating, English, Lego, everything has to be learned.
"Asking a tutor to spend money, going to the teacher's house during the New Year's Festival can not go empty-handed, the son can not always let the woman pay for the object of the house, the wedding bride price is a large sum, the school district house, home appliance cars, parking spaces, insurance ..."
In the end, I found that I had very little left.
This is, of course, an exaggerated film description, but it also reveals a certain truth.
03
After calculating this account, and then look at the initial 1,000 yuan per month, received a 3-year-old maternity allowance, it is indeed a drop in the bucket.
However, we must admit that although the previous account is quite conservative, it is still from the perspective of urban families, and does not take into account the situation in some townships, villages and towns.
Different regions have different development processes, so the cost of childbirth and the concept of childcare are different.
Especially in some poorer areas, it may be difficult to raise children with so many carefully calculated scientific ratios and interest courses, and it is already very good to ensure that children have food, clothing and school.
Therefore, in the eyes of some people, the insignificant cost of subsidies is, in their view, completely enough to raise a child to grow up healthy.
The aforementioned Huangzhugen Natural Village in Guangdong is a good example.
Since March 2017, the birth subsidy has been implemented here, and it is said to be the first region in The country to implement a policy.
Prior to this, the number of local newborns was less than 20, and within two years after the implementation of the subsidy, the village welcomed 100 newborns.
By last year, they had made policy improvements, from one-time distribution to monthly expenditure, mainly to encourage families to "give preferential breeding".
There are several points worth paying attention to in the announcement, one is that the out-of-town personnel will not be funded, indicating that this funding is mainly of a poverty alleviation nature; the other is that there is a need for a birth certificate, which does not conform to the family planning policy.
In fact, it is a more targeted subsidy for poor families.
What is more interesting is that this subsidy fee is not from the state, but the local rich who have immigrated to understand the situation, pay out of their own pockets, and want to make their hometown prosperous again.
And his subsidy policy is clearly working.
Why? Because the reason for the low local fertility rate is that there is no money.
In their parenting concept, what tourism and entertainment, ah, basically do not exist, usually watch TV and play mobile phones are considered entertainment; not to mention early education, interest classes, private schools and the like, there is no such facility, let alone spend money?
Therefore, their expected fertility costs are not so high, so fertility subsidies are very favorable policies and can play a strong stimulus.
Some people may think that this example is too extreme, but I think it is enough to prove that the birth subsidy can play a role in promoting fertility to a certain extent, provided that the subsidy is given enough, and this "enough" needs to be measured according to the actual situation in different regions.
04
Admittedly, declining fertility is by no means just a matter of money.
Are there conditions for having children, who will take care of them, how will they be educated, and will childbearing affect work?
Pile by pile, piece by piece is a problem that begins to be considered before childbirth.
Including why to have children, and who to have children, is also a topic that plagues many people.
Fundamentally, the modern social environment does not provide people with enough security to stimulate the desire to procreate.
To put it crudely, animals in nature will find a safe place to nest before giving birth, and if the environment does not provide enough security, the reduction of fertility desire is simply inevitable.
It's the same when placed on people.
Problems such as high housing prices, education infighting, and workplace anxiety have made people feel very tired, and they can't spare too much energy to consider marriage and childbearing, so they simply don't think about it.
If you can solve the problem caused by lack of money, you can indeed create the most direct sense of security with a simple and rude posture and alleviate the fertility anxiety of some people.
In fact, this is also a common practice in many countries.
In Canada, children receive child allowance until the age of 17; in addition, the medical care of both mother and child is paid for by the public, and they do not have to spend their own money.
Australia will subsidize the cost of childcare in different proportions according to the family income, up to 85%.
In France, there is a birth bonus and a basic allowance for each month, in addition to a family allowance.
The others are similar, and they are more direct and common behaviors.
Judging from the current situation in China, birth subsidies should also become a mainstream trend.
We don't have to just sing about this practice. The pain points of different regions, different families, and different individuals are different, and this complex barrier cannot be simply unified under some incentive policy.
But the maternity allowance is at least a good sign.
Compared with some empty slogans, it does provide real help in a more practical way, which can alleviate the plight of some families, and after implementation, it has achieved a certain effect.
As for how much subsidy to last and how long it will last to achieve a more universal effect, it is a problem that needs to be refined step by step.
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