Births in China slide 10% to hit their lowest on record
Births in China slide 10% to hit their lowest on record
China had just 9.56 million births in 2022, according to the National Health Commission, the lowest figure since records began in 1949.
The number of births in China tumbled 10% last year to hit their lowest level on record, a drop that comes despite a slew of government efforts to support parents and amid increasing alarm that the country has become demographically imbalanced.
China had just 9.56 million births in 2022, according to a report published by the National Health Commission. It was the lowest figure since records began in 1949.
The high costs of child care and education, growing unemployment and job insecurity as well as gender discrimination have all helped to deter many young couples from having more than one child or even having children at all.
We were taught about demographic imbalance years ago and how it would be incoming and yet nothing was done.
This is good, in my opinion.
Pollution, overpopulation, health crises, housing crises, food crises, political instability, war, the list goes on for why people aren’t having kids.
The real reason for most of the above boils down to one thing: greed.
A single income family used to be able to support multitude of children without issue. Now a dual income family has to consider finances when considering a single child. All because of the world they’d be bringing it into that has been destroyed by greed.
Contraction of economies is going to hurt all of us, but it’ll hurt the ones at the top the most, because there is only so much they can take until there aren’t enough humans to take from anymore, and the power/wealth gap will have to close out a different system will have to be established.
Cool, let's all have less babies, curb our consumption, and increase efficiencies so the children that are around get to have a future!
the children that are around get to have a future!
I'd love that, but the concern is that society collapses from the sudden top heavy population ratio that we've never had to deal with and are unprepared for. The kids won't have much of a future if that happens
Not necessarily. Also this is already happening in many countries, and they don't collapse into ruin. They just stagnate for a few generations.
It doesn't necessarily reduce population density though, because often what happens is that young people leave small towns and villages that have fewer opportunities and move to the big city, causing those little towns to die. That's usually bad for maintaining cultural and linguistic diversity across a country's landscape, but good for biodiversity, because as people go, the environment recovers.
Also as population declines, land and resources tend to consolidate more and more into the hands of fewer oligarchs. But the oligarchs all own us already anyway, so NBD.
IIRC one of many covid conspiracy theories is the chinese government intentionally release or allow covid to spread to reduce those older generations given how covid disproportionately kills old people.
Hahaha! Humans humaned themselves out of humanity
Not from China but it would have such a massive negative impact on our standard of living that it's just not worth it. It's not that we don't want kids, but we like not being in debt more.
Poverty has never been a major cause of low births. The poorest countries in the world have the highest birth rates. Instead it's about increasing women's health and education, giving them the choice to have fewer children or none. Turns out when they have the choice women don't want to get pregnant and raise kids at 20. They want to have careers and lives and travel and stuff.
Nations need to make child rearing more appealing for couples to want to be parents. Because a huge chunk of people could have salary raises and homes and be upper class and still now want to have kids.
I disagree, it's about money. Or more accurately perception, the next generation traditionally had it better than the one before until now. The current generation is unable to provide their children a better life than they had so having children is less appealing.
Because a huge chunk of people could have salary raises and homes and be upper class and still now want to have kids.
Or the disappearance of this class has led to lower birth rates.
No, it's 100% economics. Why do you think that having "careers, lives and travel" (as if having a family is not having a life?) is more appealing to modern first worlders? Because it doesn't impact their finances severely. Having more children in impoverished countries is a financial gain because children are free labor and lottery tickets to get the entire family out of poverty. In wealthy countries, children are only a financial loss.
It's good news
Its funny cuz the kids in the pic are on a "slide."
This is the best summary I could come up with:
BEIJING — The number of births in China tumbled 10% last year to hit their lowest level on record, a drop that comes despite a slew of government efforts to support parents and amid increasing alarm that the country has become demographically imbalanced.
China had just 9.56 million births in 2022, according to a report published by the National Health Commission.
Last year, the country’s population also fell for the first time in six decades, dropping to 1.41 billion people.
That has caused domestic demographers to lament that China will get old before it gets rich, slowing the economy as revenues drop and government debt increases due to soaring health and welfare costs.
Nearly 40% of Chinese newborns last year were the second child of a married couple, while 15% were from families with three or more children, health authorities said.
To spur the country’s flagging birth rate, Beijing has been rolling out a raft of measures, such as efforts to increase child care as well as financial incentives, and President Xi Jinping in May presided over a meeting to study the topic.
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