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The Chinese Population Forecast Report 2023 predicts that the Chinese population will be overtaken by the United States in 2056.
You know, we now have nearly four times the size of the United States.
Therefore, some people may think that this is alarmist.
However, objectively speaking, the situation of the Chinese population is indeed not optimistic.
At this year's (2024) two sessions, childbirth has become the most concerned issue.
Every year, we are focusing on childbirth, but the fertility rate has fallen again and again, and now it has even become the second lowest in the world.
Many experts have put forward various policies to encourage childbirth, but it is difficult to hit the nail on the head:
It's not that young people don't want to give birth, it's just too much pressure. Without removing the "three mountains", it will be impossible to reverse the fertility rate.
The demographic situation is quite dire
In recent years, the mainland's population data has hit a new low.
The first is negative population growth, with a total of about 141 million people on the mainland by the end of 2023, 2.08 million fewer than in previous years.
The number of births has not kept pace with the rate of deaths, which has been the second year in a row that there has been a negative growth.
The number of births in 2023 will be 9.02 million, a decrease of 540,000 from the previous year and a decline for seven consecutive years since 2017.
The total fertility rate (the average number of children born to each couple) is about 1.0, which is also eye-catching when looking at the world's major economies.
South Korea is undoubtedly the first from the bottom, and China is the second from the bottom, only slightly higher than South Korea.
It is predicted that the number of births in China will fall below the 7 million mark in about four years, reach 5 million in 2050, and not even 1 million by the end of the century.
Now we have less than half the number of births in India.
At this rate, India will be one-third by 2050 and less than a quarter by the end of the century.
The decline in the birth rate will inevitably further exacerbate the aging population.
In 2023, the proportion of the elderly population aged 65 and above will rise to 15.4%, with 220 million people, accounting for about 26.8% of the global elderly population.
In other words, 1 in 4 elderly people is Chinese.
And experts predict that by 2030, more than a quarter of China's population will be elderly.
By 2084, older people will make up half of the country's population.
As the baby boomers of the sixties and seventies age, our labor market will be precarious.
Reality has proved that after the reform and opening up, China has relied on the demographic dividend to maintain high-speed economic growth and enjoyed great benefits.
It's just that after that, we will probably have to bear a lot of the burden of aging.
Many developed countries have only entered deep aging after entering the developed world.
China, on the other hand, faces the challenge of growing old before getting rich.
The pension gap has increased, labor costs have risen, the manufacturing industry has continued to migrate, the vitality of innovation and entrepreneurship has declined, and the potential economic growth rate has declined.
In 2023, there will be a total of 864.81 million people aged 16-59 in the working age, a decrease of 10.75 million or 0.7 percentage points from the previous year, accounting for 61.3% of the country's total population.
If no change is made, China's economic development will be negatively affected by the demographic structure for a long time.
More recently, real estate, is also in great need of population support.
Therefore, to talk about a thousand things and ten thousand, we still have to start with the fertility rate.
The state has also introduced many policies to encourage childbirth, from the second child to the third child, but the effect has not met expectations.
Although the fertility rate has been affected by the epidemic in recent years, the overall downward trend is still obvious.
To truly reverse China's birth population, it is not possible to have policies that are not on the right track.
Conniving at the changing views of today's young people on marriage and love and childbirth, the main reason for hindering the willingness to have children is the "three mountains" of education, medical care and housing prices.
The cost of education
To some extent, children can be seen as a "consumer product" for a family.
From the birth of a child to working independently, the cost of raising a child is far greater than one might expect.
The cost of raising children mainly includes the daily expenses of raising children and the cost of education, of which the education cost undoubtedly accounts for the majority.
According to the research and estimation of Lu Dimin, a deputy to the National People's Congress, children aged 0 to 3 in Tiandong County, Guangxi Province, need to spend about 12,000 yuan per year on daily necessities, and about 25,000 yuan per month for childcare and care.
This is still an underdeveloped area with a per capita disposable income of less than 30,000 yuan, let alone a first-tier city.
As we all know, the fees charged by childcare service providers in mainland China are generally high.
According to 2020 data from the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the average monthly fee for childcare institutions is 2,700 yuan, accounting for 36% of the family's disposable income.
The cost of raising children in the infant and toddler stage is so high, and there are elementary schools, middle schools, and universities behind......
According to the China Cost of Childbirth Report, the cost of raising a child to adulthood in China is equivalent to 6.9 times the per capita GDP, about 500,000 yuan.
Interestingly, the multiple of fertility costs to GDP per capita is almost the highest in the world.
Many developed countries are only about half as long as China.
This is because many developed country governments will give 1%-3% of GDP to subsidize childbirth through cash, tax incentives and other benefits.
Fertility rates are generally higher in Europe than in Asia.
The fertility rate in northern Europe is generally higher than that in southern Europe, and their family welfare is relatively highest.
Without addressing the high cost of childbearing, the downward trend in fertility will be difficult to reverse.
Housing costs
For Asia, especially Chinese, having a house to have a home, and having a house to get married, has become a deep-rooted concept for most people.
However, reality is always out of reach.
Housing prices in China are so high that young people have to work hard for decades to buy a home on their own.
Often, a home costs one or even two families' savings, and it may not be enough.
China's house-price-to-income ratio is ridiculously high.
The so-called house-price-to-income ratio is the ratio of the total price of a house to the annual income of a family.
In 2022, the average house price in 100 key cities across the country will be 15,673 yuan/㎡, the average per capita disposable income of residents will be 51,851 yuan, and the average house-price-to-income ratio will be 12.4.
It can be interpreted as a family that has to go without food or drink for 12.4 years before it can buy a house.
Among them, Beijing, which is the highest, has a house-price-to-income ratio of 61.72, Shanghai 55.81, and Guangdong 33.30, which is daunting, and ordinary people can only hope for luxury.
The World Bank suggests that the ratio is reasonable between 1.8 and 5.5 for developed countries and between 3 and 6 for developing countries.
The higher it is, the larger the bubble is likely to be.
The reality is generally not reasonable, and the higher the house-price-to-income ratio, the lower the fertility rate.
Therefore, if the problem of high housing prices is not solved, many young people do not want to empty their wallets, take on loans for decades, and live the kind of life that they dare not get sick or lose their jobs in order to get married and have children.
Young people get married and have children out of the pursuit of a better life, and the mortgage pressure is great, and they have to bear the expenses of their children and reduce their quality of life, so who wants to have children?
Medical costs
According to data released by the National Health Commission, in 2022, a total of 8.42 billion people will be treated across the country, with an average of nearly 6 hospital visits per person.
The average outpatient cost is 342.7 yuan, and the average cost of each hospitalization is about 10,900 yuan.
The cost of medical care in the mainland has always been relatively high for ordinary people, and it can cost hundreds or sometimes even thousands to see a minor illness.
Over the course of a year, it is a large expense for a family.
Not only is it expensive to see a doctor, but sometimes it is difficult to see a doctor, and it is even more difficult to hang an expert number.
Hospitals also often have the strange phenomenon of excessive examination and medical treatment.
Therefore, many people ridicule this status quo as not seeing minor illnesses and looking down on major illnesses.
After all, a half-year-old illness is enough to empty a young man's wallet.
And families with children are even more afraid of getting sick.
Children are generally more expensive to see a doctor than adults, and the elderly in two families are also prone to problems.
But he shoulders the responsibility of supporting his family, and he is the least afraid to get sick.
Thinking about the various financial pressures that women face after getting married, the cost of women from pregnancy to childbirth alone can be prohibitive for some people.
There is a long way to go to move the "three mountains".
It's not that the country can't see a few mountains that hinder childbirth, but that education, housing, and medical problems have been around for a long time and cannot be solved overnight.
For example, housing, now that housing prices are high, it is impossible for the state to shrink and suppress it all at once.
That could backfire and cause the real estate bubble to burst, with more serious consequences, and the property market can only be slowly regulated.
The good news is that house prices have fallen significantly in some areas today.
At the same time, the state is also introducing more subsidy policies to encourage house purchases, and this year (2024), the central bank will reduce the interest rate on loans with a term of more than 5 years to 3.95%.
As for medical care, in fact, the cost of medical treatment is a problem all over the world.
This is determined by the high cost of the medical industry itself.
It's just that some countries have relatively high investment in the medical industry, and people are relatively less expensive to see a doctor.
But China is still a developing country, and given the current national conditions, it is impossible for us to invest too much in the medical industry.
Although the government has also carried out many policies, there are still some problems in implementing them.
In terms of education, it is really not easy for the country to make efforts to universalize higher education.
In recent years, the introduction of the double reduction policy and support for inclusive childcare is also to alleviate the pressure of parenting.
Although there are still some shortcomings, at least we are working hard, and we can only take it step by step.
Of course, to sum up, the most fundamental is still an economic problem.
If the state has abundant finances, it will inevitably increase investment in people's livelihood.
If the per capita GDP rises, the country is rich and the people are strong, and having children is not a great pressure, and the fertility rate will naturally gradually improve.
It's just that we still have to struggle, and it may be many more years.
In short, follow the country, and if you have the conditions to give birth to yourself, you can decide according to your own situation.
Resources
Chinese Population Forecast Report 2023
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