China's population declines for a fourth straight year amid record low birthrates
China's population has shrunk for the fourth straight year as birthrates hit a record low, national data shows.
Xiujian Peng, senior research fellow at the Centre of Policy Studies at Victoria University, said adjusting work expectations could help couples balance family life and have the energy to have more children.
She said allowing both men and women to work from home, and guaranteeing a woman's job after giving birth would help.
"Ensuring job security and preventing workplace discrimination against women who give birth can reduce the career costs of motherhood and encourage higher fertility," Dr Peng said.
However, she said these policies would not be enough to reverse the decline.
"These policies may stop the further decline of births or slightly increase the births number, but they can not change China's population decline trend," she said.
"Even if China's government could reverse the fertility decline immediately and increase its total fertility rate to a replacement level of 2.1, it will still take around 70 years for China's population to increase again.
"But many countries' experience in east Asia and Europe has told us there is no quick fix for a low fertility rate, so we will see China's total population will continue to decline in this century."
She added that in the long term, the population decline could lead to serious economic challenges for China.
10 comments:
Immigration isn't a solution for those who are immigrated-against. Unless the govt can impose rules governing who can immigrate and in what numbers, and unless those rules are intelligent. So that rules out Britain then.
Curiously few people ask if government should try and manage birth rate rather than merely manage the consequences.
Strange, because not so long ago the 'population bomb' was going to explode and immiserate us all. Perhaps the tiny U turns hide the biggest U turns?
It's almost as if 'government' is never happy - which seems like evidence of a massive underachievement.
dearieme - yes, lax, unintelligent, furtive and perhaps malign British immigration policies seems to be why so many people feel as if they are the immigrated-against - because they so clearly are.
DJ - if government did try to manage birth rate, some difficult political debates would certainly arise on all kinds of social issues and trends which have taken place over the decades. That would make 'government' very unhappy.
Of course the birth rate in the West might be a lot better if we stopped killing babies in the womb. Just sayin'..........
Sobers - yes, some people in government who look at demographic trends must have seen for a long time that large scale immigration could be a likely consequence of terminations on demand.
Agree with Sobers in particular.
"guaranteeing a woman's job after giving birth would help.
"Ensuring job security and preventing workplace discrimination against women who give birth"
I've been saying for a long time that the cheap tat comoing out of China is something we should be taking advantage of now, as it won't last. Eventually they are going to catch up to the west with various workplace regulations, wages etc, and when that happens, prices will catch up too
James - yes.
Bucko - the problem with cheap tat is that it doesn't last, perhaps the time will come when we are happy to pay more for something which lasts or can be repaired. At the moment I could do with a computer mouse which lasts more than a few months.
AK Haart - True dat, but not always. I've been advised not to buy Chinese car parts, but bought some at a tenth of the UK/Euro cost and they've lasted longer than the car
Bucko - I read somewhere that it is possible to have things made in China to any quality standard, high or low, whatever the dealer wants.
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