How hard is it to raise a child in China?
There is generally no quantitative standard for this kind of problem.
Some children, starting from kindergarten, are international private schools. Some children go to the nearest school in the house.
However, someone made a specimen based on "the cost and per capita disposable income of raising a child to the age of 18". Let's compare the cost of raising a baby in several large countries.
Source: Yu Wa Population Research, Jefferies, OECD, National Bureau of Statistics
The data shows that the disposable income multiple of raising children in China is 16 times, the most expensive in the world.
Japan and South Korea are close behind, about 9 times and 10 times, respectively, and the evil United States is 5 times.
The cheapest is Australia, Germany, Sweden, 2 to 4 times.
Overall, the cost of raising a child in China is 6 times that of the United States and 1.5 times that of Japan.
Why is it so expensive to raise children in China?
According to a latest report released by the Yuwa Population Research Think Tank, it costs an average of 485,000 yuan for Chinese families to raise a child until the age of eighteen.
Among them, the average cost of raising families in Beijing and Shanghai is the highest, reaching 969,000 yuan and 1,026,000 yuan respectively.
Source: Yuwa Population Study
This set of data only calculates the degree of use of raising a child until the age of eighteen, and does not include the subsequent costs of attending college and entering society, such as marriage, such as buying a house, such as a bride price...
If you count the cost of college, the average cost of parenting from 0 to university undergraduate is 627,000 yuan.
In addition, if you calculate the average cost of childbirth relative to the multiple of per capita GDP, to compare the difficulty of raising children in the world, China's multiple of 6.9, second only to South Korea in the world, higher than many developed countries.
Source: Yuwa Population Study
The so-called "cost of childbearing" includes both the cost of pregnancy to childbirth (i.e., the "cost of giving birth") and the cost of parenting and education (i.e. the "cost of childbearing").
The cost of childbearing is one of the most important factors affecting the willingness of families of childbearing age to have children.
The results of a national fertility sample survey conducted by the former National Health and Family Planning Commission in 2017 found that the top three reasons why women of childbearing age do not intend to have children again are, in order:
"Financial burden", "too old", "no one with children".
The proportion of these three accounted for 77.4%, 45.6% and 33.2% respectively.
These three reasons undoubtedly reflect the problem of high cost of babybirth in China from the side.
Today we will analyze them one by one.
From the perspective of the per capita consumption expenditure and composition of the mainland in 2019.
Ordinary Chinese people spend too much money on food, housing, and transportation.
Together, these three account for 70% of consumption.
Source: National Bureau of Statistics, Yuwa Population Research
Decomposing it again, it is that our food is expensive, the house is expensive, and the transportation cost is expensive.
House, I won't mention it anymore.
Empty 6 wallets of 3 generations to exchange for a down payment from a young couple's new home.
Many people have a mortgage every month for half of their income, and basically most of the money they earn is eaten by the mortgage.
The high cost of food and transportation can also be seen in the price increase.
Source: Wind Zeping Macro
In the past five years, almost all of them have been positive growth, and there have been few cases of price declines.
The lack of money is the most critical reason for reducing the number of babies.
In addition to the high cost of living in housing prices and prices, the lack of workplace care and social welfare protection is also the reason why the cost of childbirth in Many China remains high.
We know that Japan and South Korea have introduced a lot of parenting incentives.
For example, kindergartens are free, female employees have holidays for several months, and there are also large birth subsidies.
European and American countries in this regard, the corresponding measures are more powerful.
In Iceland, for example, since 2003, each couple has been given 9 months' leave to care for their newborn.
Parents who work full-time also receive 80 per cent of their salary during parental leave, and 90 per cent of Icelandic children are enrolled in public kindergartens funded by the State.
Danish law gives each spouse 32 weeks of "parental leave", after which the mother has the right to return to her original post and work as usual.
However, since China has not yet entered the level of developed society, these subsidies and care cannot keep up for the time being.
Many young couples have babies and are about to go to work, and the children can only be taken care of by their parents.
After all, early education institutions and early childhood nurseries are not free, and the price at their own expense is very high.
One family, two couples, three children, four elderly people.
I went to work at eight o'clock and left work at nine o'clock in the evening, and it took a lot of effort to pay off a million mortgages.
He is being beaten by 996, and if he regenerates a gold-devouring beast, if he is not careful, he will slide.
Data from 2021 show that the number of marriage registrations in 2020 is 40% lower than in 2013, the average number of children intended to have after 90 is only 1.66, 10% lower than that of "post-80s", and the scale of women aged 20-34 during the boom period has decreased by nearly 3.7 million year-on-year.
When we dig into the reasons why young people are now lying flat and rolling up, the cost of raising a child may be a consideration.
And the solution is also very intuitive.
Reduce housing prices, prices, education costs and improve social welfare.
Only by building a comfortable, friendly and equal social environment can we improve the fertility rate at present.
Hope we wait until this day soon.
News source: Wuxiang Finance