Text: Ying Yan
At present, protecting women's rights and interests and encouraging women to have children has gradually become a consensus in many aspects. Many places have introduced preferential policies, such as increasing parental leave, extending maternity leave and paternity leave, and giving childcare subsidies; the draft revision of the Law on the Protection of Women's Rights and Interests is also soliciting opinions, and legislative protection has taken a key step.
According to media reports, China's aging has entered a moderate stage, and the problem of low fertility rate still needs to be solved. Although the second child has been liberalized, it seems that it has little impact on the growth of the number of newborns in recent years. On the contrary, a downward trend gradually appears over time.
The data shows that in 2017, 2018 and 2019, the number of newborns on the mainland was about 17.23 million, 15.23 million and 14.65 million, respectively. In 2020, China's new population was only 10.035 million, 4.615 million fewer than in 2019. It can be seen from this that if we continue to develop in this direction, The degree of aging in China will be very high in the future, and there will be negative population growth, which also means that the demographic dividend accumulated over the years will disappear, so it is China's economic development that will be directly affected.
In order to improve this situation, the state can only continue to liberalize the fertility policy. So at the end of May 2021, the state officially opened three children, allowing a family to have three children. So, can the adjustment of fertility policy really drive young people's fertility enthusiasm? Since the implementation of the three-child policy, the discussion has been very fierce, and netizens have also expressed their views. At the same time, some experts have also expressed their views.
For example, Ren Zeping believes that those who give birth to two or three children must be 75-85 years old, they are the main birth group at present, do not expect post-90s and post-00s. Coincidentally, Bai Yansong said that in the context of late marriage, he did not even want to have a child, let alone three children and four children. Why don't young people want to have children? After all, there are several reasons: high childcare costs, high housing costs, and delays in women's workplaces.
Unwilling to give birth is mainly "can't afford to be born, can't afford to raise"
To solve the problem of low fertility rate, we must first solve the problem that people cannot afford to raise. Today, unlike in the past, raising children involves many aspects, housing, energy and the workplace will have an impact, housing prices are too high to afford to buy a house; child birth, counseling, transportation, and various training courses require time and money. Especially for women, having three children can be a lot of physical and mental stress.
It is difficult for women to take care of their children and families while working, and it is difficult for a mother who has two children before to have a third child. When they take care of their children and then go out into the workplace, it is difficult to find a suitable position. At the same time, the pressure to have more children may also affect the overall happiness index and quality of life of the family. Therefore, many netizens frankly said that they would not have three children. In fact, when it comes to the fundamentals, it is impossible to afford it!
And all kinds of loans, mortgages, car loans and their pursuit of improving the quality of life, all require economic expenditure. In this way, the monthly consumer expenditure is also a considerable amount. Moreover, many young people have to support many elderly people, and they cannot even guarantee the quality of life of themselves and their elders.
Therefore, Ren Zeping believes that only by adopting strong policies to encourage fertility – which requires financial resources to invest 5% of GDP – can fertility be maintained at the Western average of 1.6. In addition, the report also makes it clear that spawning is a technical task, and specific measures should be introduced around meeting the needs of the main force of fertility. That is to say, it is necessary to target the pain points of contemporary young people who are "unwilling to have children" and prescribe the right medicine, only in this way can the effect of spawning appear.
Ren Zeping put forward "new proposals"
Ren Zeping put forward the 2022 "new proposal" in the report: First, cash and tax subsidies, for two children and each minor child of a family that has been employed, a monthly cash subsidy of 1,000 yuan, income tax and social security halved. Families with many children are given a monthly cash subsidy of 2,000 yuan, exempt from income tax and social security.
The second is the housing subsidy, which is subsidized through mortgage interest return or house price discount. For example, the mortgage interest of a two-child family can be refunded 50%, and the mortgage interest of a three-child family can be fully subsidized. Or in areas with high housing prices, the policy of 10% off the one-child house price, 30% off the two-child house price, and 50% off the three-child house price can be implemented. At the same time, the supply of housing land in the influx areas and large cities will be increased.
The third is to increase the number of nurseries and increase the enrolment rate of 0-3 years old from 4% to about 50%. Nursery schools have been added so that parents of children will not be affected by their career development because they want children. There is also no need for parents to sacrifice themselves to bring their babies full-time because they are worried that their children are not brought, resulting in a decrease in the overall income of the family.
The fourth is to reduce the burden of medical education, because the child's physical defense ability is not perfect, the family's expenditure on the child's medical treatment is very large. Popularizing undergraduate education and reducing the pressure of further education are also important problems in solving the reluctance of young people to have children. Ren Zeping's new proposal accurately grasps the pain points of young people who do not want to have children, and has won the recognition and support of many parents.
Of course, it also includes other public policy aids that help reduce the cost of childcare, such as increasing parental leave, introducing foreign workers, and liberalizing the technology-assisted reproductive industry. In fact, some cities are already implementing these measures.
Education and housing prices are being comprehensively remedied
In fact, how many children to have depends on the will of the individual, and no one forces everyone to have children. Moreover, the state does not just let go of the policy and ignores it, but comprehensively rectifies these "roadblocks" that hinder fertility. Therefore, the supervision of the real estate market in 2021 is stricter than in any previous year, such as the "three red lines", "no speculation in housing", "restriction of fall orders", etc., and there are many similar policies that strongly suppress the real estate market. According to statistics, the property market has been regulated as high as 650 times, a record.
According to relevant statistics, at present, more than 10 cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chongqing, Xi'an, Xiamen, Chengdu, Dalian, Nanjing, and Hefei have carried out comprehensive rectification of school district housing. After the school district housing rectification, it is to severely crack down on extracurricular training institutions.
At present, education seems to have an "inner volume", no family wants their children to lose at the starting line, coupled with the touting of these extracurricular tutoring classes, the entire extracurricular education and training institutions have become a capital market. The "double reduction policy" introduced this time mainly considers many aspects, with the purpose of reducing the pressure on students, parents and teachers, and more importantly, alleviating parents' anxiety and wallet pressure.
The second child is not enough, the third child to make up, the effect can be imagined. If the problem is not fundamentally solved, the fertility rate will not increase and the number of births will still decline. There is no doubt that the supporting measures for the three children will be more and more, and several factors hindering fertility will be solved one by one, and it is believed that more people will respond to national policies in the future.
"It is recommended that the third child attend kindergarten free of charge, return 50% mortgage interest to families with three children and above, extend and enforce paid parental leave for men, stimulate the fertility of women of childbearing age through cash incentives, and add 10 to 20 points to the third child college entrance examination"... In the past few days, many deputies and committee members have put forward suggestions on encouraging childbearing, and if these suggestions are realized, are you willing to have a second or third child?