VOX: Why China's population is shrinking

[beijingwalker]

You can tell that to the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences who did the projections.

It's math. On average, women needs to give birth to 2.1 children to replace herself and her partner, otherwise known as the replacement rate.

China's total fertility rate is around 1.15 in 2021. 1.15/2.1 = ~55%. China's current TFR can only replace ~55% of the previous generation. In other words, each generation will shrink by ~45% at current TFR.

China's urban TFR is even lower at 0.86. 0.86/2.1 = ~40%. In other words, without internal migration, each generation of urban Chinese will shrink by ~60% at current TFR. Only South Korea with a TFR of 0.78 can fight with such speed of demographic collapse.

That's why I say it's too slow, under one bilion till the year 2100, I won't live to see this milestone achievement.

 

[nahtanbob]

no plan whatsoever. They would have grilled my @ss for saying such a line on domestic forums

another story of who will bell the cat

 

[Mista]

That's why I say it's too slow, under one bilion till the year 2100, I won't live to see this milestone achievement.

Lol good luck.

 

[ZeEa5KPul]

China's TFR was 1.7 as recently as 2017. Lifting the TFR to 1.9 and holding it there is a perfectly feasible goal with effective social policy.

Bringing up South Korea and Japan is irrelevant. They both have "democratic" governments that fail at everything, their experiences have no bearing on China.

 

[Skull and Bones]

Pop quiz @Get Ya Wig Split: What's the population of China? What's the population of the US? Which is larger and by how much?

With rising older population, who will have the highest amount of liability?

 

[ZeEa5KPul]

With rising older population, who will have the highest amount of liability?

Not to worry, there'll always be cheap Indian labour to do China's menial work.

 

[Skull and Bones]

Not to worry, there'll always be cheap Indian labour to do China's menial work.

Not Pakistani housemaids exported efficiently through CPEC?

 

[Mista]

China's TFR was 1.7 as recently as 2017. Lifting the TFR to 1.9 and holding it there is a perfectly feasible goal with effective social policy.

It was only a temporary spike due to the relaxation of family planning policy, which is not going to be sustainable. There were more 2nd child kids born in 2017 and 2018 than 1st child kids which obviously is not going to continue. You need to have your first kid before having a second kid.

根据国家统计局数据，2017年中国出生人口为1723万，抽样调查生育率为1.58，看起来生育率不算低，但其实是二孩政策带来的生育堆积推高了生育率，其中一孩、二孩、三孩和以上的生育率分别为0.67、0.81、0.11。可见，二孩生育率比一孩生育率还高，甚至占到总和生育率一半以上。由于生了一孩才能生二孩，所以在生育状况稳定时，二孩生育率必然低于一孩生育率。去掉二孩堆积因素，即使假定生有一孩的父母中有高达60%的母亲会生育二孩，那么2017年的自然总和生育率也只有1.18（即0.67+0.6*0.67+0.11）。

这一趋势在2018年更为明显。虽然2018年的抽样调查生育率还未公布，但由统计公报出生人口1523万推算的生育率仅为1.46，比2017年的1.63降低了10%。在2017年，二孩数量是一孩的1.22倍，而二孩生育率是一孩的1.21倍，两个倍数相近。而在2018年，二孩依然比一孩多，意味着二孩生育率至少与一孩生育率大致相当。也即2018年1.46的总和生育率中还有约1/4可归因于堆积。去掉生育堆积因素，2018年自然生育率仅1.1左右。如果生育率长期保持1.1，这意味着每过一代人，出生人口就会减半。

https://finance.sina.cn/zl/2019-10-26/zl-iicezzrr5091394.d.html?vt=4&cid=79615

ChatGPT translation:

According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, the number of newborns in China in 2017 was 17.23 million, and the sampled fertility rate was 1.58. Although the fertility rate does not seem low, in fact, the fertility accumulation brought about by the second-child policy has pushed up the fertility rate. The fertility rates for first-child, second-child, third-child, and above were 0.67, 0.81, and 0.11, respectively. It can be seen that the fertility rate of the second child is even higher than that of the first child, accounting for more than half of the total fertility rate. Since one must have given birth to the first child before having the second child, when the fertility situation stabilizes, the fertility rate of the second child will inevitably be lower than that of the first child. If we remove the second-child accumulation factor, even if we assume that up to 60% of mothers who have given birth to one child will give birth to a second child, the total fertility rate in 2017 would only be 1.18 (i.e., 0.67 + 0.6 * 0.67 + 0.11).

This trend became even more pronounced in 2018. Although the sampled fertility rate for 2018 has not yet been released, the fertility rate estimated from the 15.23 million births reported in the statistical bulletin is only 1.46, a 10% decrease from the 1.63 in 2017. In 2017, the number of second children was 1.22 times that of the first child, and the second-child fertility rate was 1.21 times that of the first child, with the two ratios being similar. However, in 2018, there were still more second children than first children, meaning that the second-child fertility rate was at least roughly equivalent to the first-child fertility rate. That is, about 1/4 of the total fertility rate of 1.46 in 2018 can be attributed to accumulation. If we remove the fertility accumulation factor, the natural fertility rate in 2018 is only about 1.1. If the fertility rate remains at 1.1 for a long time, it means that the number of births will be halved every generation.

The TFR in 2015 is only 1.05, albeit family planning policies were still in place.

The total fertility rate in China's northeastern provinces was the lowest in the world - around a third of Japan's - and leads to the decline in the region's labor force, a Chinese expert said.

Yi Fuxian, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told the Global Times on Tuesday that Northeast China - Heilongjiang, Liaoning and Jilin provinces - had the world's lowest fertility rate, or number of children an average woman will have over her lifetime, in 2015 at 0.55.

It means that the next-generation population in the region is only one-fourth of the last generation. That's 38 percent of Japan's and 44 percent of South Korea's.

The fertility rate in China in 2015 was 1.05. The 2014 World Bank records show China's rate is lower than those of 199 countries and regions, people.cn reported.

Yi blamed the fertility rate for the drop in the region's labor force, not the population exodus, and urged the region to set more policies to encourage the young generation to produce more children.

A report published by the National Health Commission in 2016 said the fertility rate in northeastern China was 0.75 in 2010.

Northeast China has world's lowest fertility rate, around a third of Japan's: expert - Global Times

www.globaltimes.cn

Bringing up South Korea and Japan is irrelevant. They both have "democratic" governments that fail at everything, their experiences have no bearing on China.

Lol, sure...

 

[ZeEa5KPul]

Lol, sure...

Yes, sure. There are a multitude of social policies China can implement that a democracy couldn't contemplate. Punitive taxes on the childless to fund couples with children, guaranteed school and university placement for children with siblings, improved job opportunities for people with children, tax credits and rebates for families, etc. Policies that can be put under the heading "affirmative action for the two child family."

That's just the beginning. There are ways to decouple the problem entirely from the population's desire to have children. For example, the government could harvest reproductive cells from the population, combine them with IVF, and implant these embryos into surrogate mothers imported from poor countries. The children resulting from this program would be raised in vast state-run orphanages and educated from birth into model citizens. This would allow the country to "manufacture" as many people as it needs.

Better yet, these cells could be combined intelligently instead of randomly as they would in nature. The embryos could be selected for traits like intelligence, health, and psychological disposition. Consider how rare are the towering intellects throughout history we celebrate - now imagine the implications of producing millions of them every year.