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Chinese Demography
- bhouston 6y agoVery few cou tries right now have a self sustaining birth rate. I believe no first world nation has a self sustaining birth rate. This does appear to be a major problem everywhere that is going to be one of the big challenges we face in the coming decades. Not sure what the answer is but off hand it seems that conservatives and those that are religious have higher birth rates than those who are secular and liberal thus part of this problem is clearly values/cultural.
- 88840-8855 6y agoThe answer is migration. Even Japan is reforming it's ultra conservative migration rules. Let's don't forget that we are soon 8 billion people on this planet. Imagine 8 billion elephants or 8 billion Tigers living on earth. We are too many and that's not sustainable.
- raverbashing 6y agoBringing people that share none of your values/cultural background? Thanks but no thanks Which doesn't mean it couldn't be done, but not the way it is done currently.
- dominicl 6y agoHave heard this before 8 billion would be too much. I've learned human population is always in an equilibrium with the technological ability to provide for them. So agriculture innovation leads to further population growths. What hard limit are we running into? Why not further innovation and 16 billion?
- mytailorisrich 6y agoWe are not in equilibrium as the climate and environmental situation makes absolutely plain.
- lnsru 6y agoMaybe climate is in absolute equilibrium. Warmer climate opens new areas for living. Just look at the globe - there are much more land in the north than on equator.
- chrisco255 6y agoYes but despite the rhetoric about runaway warmth, northern Canada and Russia remain fairly inhospitable.
- killtimeatwork 6y agoI suspect it's a matter of time. However, from what I've read most of the soil in Siberia is very poor for farming, so I guess there won't be much food production coming from there even if the climate becomes warmer...
- kijin 6y agoIf you really want to, soil quality can be fixed with heavy machinery and chemical fertilizers. But the new, warmer climate isn't particularly stable yet, so it's probably not wise to pour too much resources into that mega-project at this time.
- chrisco255 6y agoDon't bet on it. We're still in an ice age and a glacial period will return before Canada and Russia become tropical paradise.
- esarbe 6y agoWell, it's not. In equilibrium, that is. Whatever you mean by it - it's not. What makes you think that these countries will let in the desperate fugitives? No, that won't happen.
- mytailorisrich 6y agoDestroying the environment in order to expand our use of resources is not an equilibrium. We've never been in equilibrium. We've continuously expanded at the expense of other species. It's just that now the limit of this expansion has become very visible
- esarbe 6y agoYeah, no. There's no equilibrium. What we are currently doing is predatory ecosystem exploitation where we destroy our own life support system for the short gain. All that loss of habitats and of biodiversity? That's going come back to bite use hard and it's not waiting for the far future. This shit is happening within the next 25 years. To think that we are in any kind of equilibrium is to delude yourself.
- viraptor 6y agoLong term equilibrium for the species is not a great concept for us right now. At some point we'll run into an ecological problem wiping out most of the corn in the US for a year. That could be a potato famine level event, but we'll regrow in a few decades... equilibrium kept, but it doesn't help those who starved.
- robjan 6y agoMigration from where? If all developed countries are below replacement birth rate the only solution is to remove skilled workers from developing countries which ultimately damages their economies.
- killtimeatwork 6y agoMigration across the world and across history was and is generally about unskilled workers. The skilled people are less incentivized to move (the in-demand skills guarantee somewhat decent living in most places on Earth), while for unskilled people from poorest countries migrating can be about baseline survival, so the motivation is very strong. Also, the unskilled people are more welcome in the target country, as they do the worst jobs for the least money [1], which basically increases everybody's standard of living. [1] For example, there would be serious problems in the German society if not for Eastern European immigrants who take care of millions of older people for pennies. If these immigrants were not there, the older people and their families would have to pay 3-4x times the amount for German caretakers, which would of course break the budget of many.
- corty 6y agoThat is quite untrue, especially for Germany. Germany does not only siphon off unskilled (mostly seasonal) laborers from eastern Europe. We also draw in a lot of their educated workforce, which is especially apparent and problematic in fields like medicine, where doctors and nurses wander westward and are the missing in their countries of origin.
- morlockabove 6y agoPresumably you want every country to be developed. So what happens when every country in the world has a shrinking population?
- snowwrestler 6y agoThen we finally start to manage the planet as the finite resource it is.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- inglor_cz 6y agoThis answer brings a lot of questions with it. The rise of the far right in Europe is mostly caused by clashes of cultural norms of native Europeans vs. immigrant Muslims. As of 2020, it is not entirely clear if France, for example, can prevent emergence of dozens of alienated urban zones which aren't part of the national whole in any meaningful sense - a scattering of small Gaza Strips across the map. Neither is it clear whether all of the grooming gangs (mostly Pakistanis of Mirpuri origin) in UK have already been extirpated and how long will the P.R. disaster be remembered. This is a huge headache, because even in the Islamic world, high fertility is typical for backward, bigoted regions. Secular urban centers like Tehran and Izmir are no better than Europe, as far as total number of kids goes, so they cannot serve as a reservoir of workforce. Total fertility today is strongly negatively correlated with education of women, which means that most kids are born in places hostile to female education attainment. Such as Niger, Afghanistan or Yemen. But these are precisely the places whose cultural norms work as a bombshell when suddenly transplanted into Europe.
- 9HZZRfNlpR 6y agoMaybe for America that is such a young country of immigrants all over the world but definetly the majority of world nation states don't see mass immigration as a solution to the problem.
- baybal2 6y ago> We are too many and that's not sustainable. Not a sound argument. Earth can easily sustain hundreds of billions of people even at modern day technology level in supreme comfort. By some calculations, even one trillion is possible without having anybody switching to algae diet.
- sudeepj 6y agoTo add to the problem it is generally believed/conjectured that once a fertility rate drops, it does not go up [1] (barring few temporary spikes) [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4822437/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4822437/
- arc-in-space 6y agoThe paper you link makes the case that this hypothesis has no real evidence to stand on. I'm not sure how concerned anyone should be about this particular brand of fortune-telling. Wikipedia states this about the referenced 'demographic transition' model. Note the last sentence: > It must be remembered that the DTM is only a model and cannot necessarily predict the future. It does however give an indication of what the future birth and death rates may be for an underdeveloped country, together with the total population size. Most particularly, of course, the DTM makes no comment on change in population due to migration. It is not applicable for high levels of development, as it has been shown that after a HDI of 0.9 the fertility increases again.
- sudeepj 6y agoYou are right. I should have pointed this out. I was trying to find citation about the conjecture I mentioned. I remember reading somewhere but only found this which says that it is an assumption.
- powerapple 6y agoIf technology is on track of disrupting our society, countries with advanced technology and smaller population may be the one benefiting a lot from it. A smaller population means the whole expenditure of supporting the population will be small, job losses are affordable, economic solutions such as basic income can actually work better. In order to support smaller populations, the infrastructure needed for a robotic economy is more achievable. You don't need to pump the economy to keep people in jobs. The large developing economy with big population and less advanced technology will be left behind forever.
- raducu 6y agoRight, so actually a country with a population of 1 individual would benefit the most? Who knew that the technology game will be won by some loonie that declares his basement a sovereign country?
- docdeek 6y agoIsrael (2.4) is above replacement rate, and France is below but close (1.9) for a larger developed country. Other than that, though, they are thin on the ground. [0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependencies_by_total_fertility_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...
- oblio 6y agoIsrael is that high primarily due to ultra orthodox Jews. Who might actually create a sustainability problem if they keep it up since they have many kids per family (4+).
- bhouston 6y agoSo Israel's liberal/secular population is declining relative to the religious/conservative? That is my thesis generally. What effect does that have on culture/society in Israel?
- esarbe 6y agoLess tolerance across the board and strong tendencies towards a theocracy?
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoThey're also dropping fast, just a little behind the curve but not much different from every one else.
- oblio 6y agoThey are? The last articles I read (maybe from 2018) didn't seem to believe this would happen. Do you have a more recent reliable source? Thanks!
- JoeAltmaier 6y agohttps://ifstudies.org/blog/a-new-normal-an-updated-look-at-fertility-trends-across-the-globe https://ifstudies.org/blog/a-new-normal-an-updated-look-at-f... Last graph
- mytailorisrich 6y agoThe answer is to accept and embrace the end of population growth, and even cheer for population decline. This obviously requires a paradigm shift but ultimately can be a net positive for the environment, quality of life, and individual wealth.
- esarbe 6y agoWhile some population decline is probably for the best, we need to stabilize the population at some point. Otherwise there's no foundation for a sustainable civilization.
- mytailorisrich 6y agoObviously. No-one is suggesting to make our species extinct... But let's remember that we were less than 1 billion not too long ago while we're on course to be 10 billion soon, with individual consumption massive increased on top of that. We won't solve climate and environmental problems unless this is tackled. The aim of civilization is to make people better off, not to squeeze them into a dystopian world of overpopulation and environmental collapse.
- esarbe 6y agoAbsolutely! I think it would be fine to go back to 1 billion, although the transition to a less extensive infrastructure will probably be quite rough. It's good that we already started concentrating most of the population in cities. This will help with the transition immensely.
- raducu 6y agoHas the concentration of population in cities helped us in the past when things gotten quite rough?
- esarbe 6y agoThe most important factor in keeping people alive nowadays is infrastructure. We're not self-sufficient anymore and it's pretty delusional to think that we'll be able to move back to some kind of pre-industrial pastoral idyll. We are dependent on high-tech and that's not going to change. The easiest way to make everyone able to participate in that high-tech is to have high-density population centers with little infrastructure benefiting the most people.
- bluescrn 6y agoWhile it’s an economic problem for a while, a declining population is wonderful news. It’s the best thing that could happen to reduce our destruction of the environment, and the pyramid scheme of ‘endless growth on a finite planet’ had to end at some point.
- bhouston 6y agoDeclining birthrates are not equal across all demographics. I believe that because liberal and secular have the lowest birthrates it means the future of the world is religious and conservative, no? This means generally tolerance and science literacy could decline. That worries me.
- Melting_Harps 6y ago> Declining birthrates are not equal across all demographics. I believe that because liberal and secular have the lowest birthrates it means the future of the world is religious and conservative, no? Poor, non and under developed nations with poor living standards are the only ones that still have persistently neutral to positive replacement birth rates. And, yes, this has many consequences, which his why I hope S. America, Africa and South E. Asia are the benefactors of a weaker China and they too begin to modernize as the whole Species stands to benefit from that and we decouple from the CCP's violent and belligerent stance against the World. I agree that in the immediate sense a lower population is net boon to allow the Planet to heal itself from myopic Human action/pollution/over consumption, but as we're getting closer to becoming a multi-planetary species we will have to increase this population size significantly to meet the demand of those efforts and I think their is a significant lag time if the culture of having 2 kids per married couple and has been reduced to 2 dogs per married family for my generation and likely those to come and has become the norm in order to remain relevant in the ever shrinking labour market.
- yorwba 6y ago> I hope S. America, Africa and South E. Asia are the benefactors of a weaker China and they too begin to modernize as the whole Species stands to benefit from that and we decouple from the CCP's violent and belligerent stance against the World. There are plenty of belligerent countries in those regions, it's just that they're not considered important enough for their saber-rattling to be noticed internationally, and their enemies tend to be sub-national groups formed around shared ethnicity, control of resources (drugs, oil, mines) or religion who are even less likely to attract attention. By now, lots of people have heard about Mexican drug cartels, Kurdistan or Joseph Kony's "Lord's Resistance Army", but who cared about the Houthis in Yemen before their civil war turned into an international proxy war? Who could've predicted the civil war in Ethiopia? And who knows whether the Movement for the Autonomy of Kabylie, the Naga nationalist movement, the Wa state or the Free Papua Movement will be next to make international news? Modernization doesn't guarantee peace and democracy; it also means higher availability of more powerful or more, cheaper weapons. Combined with population growth, even small areas are able to raise substantial armies, while declining resources (relative to population) incentivize wars to secure a larger slice of the pie. I expect that we'll continue to see large countries only held together by shared colonial history disintegrate violently into smaller regions with more complex borders.
- kace91 6y ago> Not sure what the answer is but off hand it seems that conservatives and those that are religious have higher birth rates than those who are secular and liberal thus part of this problem is clearly values/cultural. Mainly an issue with feminism being widespread but living/working conditions not having caught up with it. Society is set up assuming that the wife will stay home to care for the kids. As a result having children pretty much requires either enough disposable income to outsource caring for the kids (nanny, extracurricular activities, etc), or one of the parents staying at home. For conservatives it's less of a problem because it's more accepted to have the wife stay home. If we want birthrates to raise again we're going to have to figure out how to make having kids not be a stopper for your career.
- Miner49er 6y ago> Mainly an issue with feminism being widespread but living/working conditions not having caught up with it. Are you sure that women entering the workforce wasn't _because_ of economic reasons? It seems to me that "feminism", as you put it, may have only been allowed to win, because it was desirable economically. In other words, could feminism be a result of living/working conditions and not the cause? Following this, people are having less kids because there is huge economic incentive not too.
- morlockabove 6y agoIt was desirable economically to the upper classes. It was, obviously, bad for workers (two-income trap). The only way it would be a net economic positive for them would be through their share of gains to the overall economy... but we know that the median person's proportional share of the economy has shrunk, so that's a bust.
- Miner49er 6y ago> It was desirable economically to the upper classes. It was, obviously, bad for workers (two-income trap). Long term yes. But did women enter the workforce because of the economic benefit originally? Then as women continued entering wages fell (supply and demand) and the working class ended up trapped, as you say. Another huge factor is globalization. Women maybe had to enter to earn enough when work started being outsourced.
- nerdponx 6y agoWhat exactly is bad about this?
- srean 6y agoThe population shifts to the elderly. That can lead to reduced number of people who are actively contributing unless retirement age too is pushed upwards. Gains in productivity can offset this to an extent. Savings scheme where the inflow from new generation pays for the outgoing generation can become unsustainable if the demographics becomes top heavy.
- nerdponx 6y agoSounds like a temporary problem with long term benefits, to me.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoBut automation is proceeding at breakneck speed (especially this year). It wont take 'young people' to make the goods that everyone needs, not for much longer (years). And its actual goods and supply, that determine the value of money which is after all, imaginary points.
- inglor_cz 6y agoGoods are only part of the necessary economy. A society with a lot of elderly = demand for huge amounts of daily care, which is hard to automate away, though probably not impossible. (The Japanese are definitely trying.) The only way out of this conundrum would be a breakthrough in longevity, where people would live to 110 in a relatively good shape and being able to care for themselves, then die within weeks from some fast degenerative process.
- 6y ago
- agd 6y agoA problem in some ways yes, but also an opportunity. A fantastic opportunity for the environment and to solve the housing crisis. I’m still amazed how many politicians think a pyramid scheme of population increase is a good, sustainable way to pay for pensions and healthcare.
- raducu 6y agoThe environment will need us to solve the mess we created. No way a declining population would be able to, we need at least a stable population. The real crisis is the zombie crisis -- zombie empires and zombie societies that lost all touch with family values and morality, or mental sanity; the problem is all of the developed world is the same, so no winner to take over.
- cik 6y agoI'm in Israel - we have a self-sustaining birth rate amongst both the Jewish and Arab populations, both religious and secular. Then again culture here is very, very family based.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoYet even Israel has seen it drop drastically, not yet to settle. See this, graph at the end: https://ifstudies.org/blog/a-new-normal-an-updated-look-at-fertility-trends-across-the-globe https://ifstudies.org/blog/a-new-normal-an-updated-look-at-f...
- cik 6y agoOur birth rate has barely dropped. It's gone from an average of 3.11 births in 2018 to 3.08 births in 2019. Interestingly, the birth rate varies greatly by city, with Jerusalem's being twice Haifa's.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoThere were populations that were as high as 9 in the 1960's. All have fallen in line with global trends.
- HuwytNashi_007 6y agoI suspect Jews don't allow the same errrr "advertising" in Israel that the largely-progressive Jewish media is renowned for in the West. Our kids experience such hyper-exposure to themes including LGBTQI+, interracial relationships, career > family, promiscuity > monogamy, etc that it's a miracle we're having any kids at all! Things will change though, they always do.
- 88840-8855 6y agoI would liked to mention how different families work in China. Children will take care of their parents in old age. Multi generational living is common in Asia. Chinese Grandparents take care of children while the parents are working. In many many many ways this Chinese system is more resilient to the downsides of aging compared with the western individualistic lifestyle.
- sudeepj 6y ago> Children will take care of their parents in old age ... Chinese Grandparents take care of children while the parents are working Indian families are also similar, but never before (at least in India) so many young people have to work away from their home (normally some small town). This puts enormous pressure on young, double income couples in cities.
- i_am_proteus 6y agoEuropean and American families do this too.
- christophilus 6y agoDo they? American families don’t really do this in statistically significant numbers, I’d expect. No idea about Europe.
- i_am_proteus 6y agoSure they do, as soon a you leave the UMC bubble where nursing homes seem affordable. It's more common in recent immigrants, but 25% of the US population is 2nd-generation or more recent.
- redis_mlc 6y ago> in China. Children will take care of their parents in old age. Let me rephrase that so it's clearer: "in China. Children MUST take care of their parents 100% FINANCIALLY in old age." Because of the former one-child policy, that means you're it. This is a problem for the Chinese military and police, because if you're a one-child, you're very risk averse. This is seen in Chinese police allowing people to drown instead of even getting their feet wet. "Chinese police and onlookers watch a girl drown" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz83kFZf_CA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz83kFZf_CA
- raverbashing 6y agoI really don't see why this is a "worry". The world could use less people. It is only a worry for those that exploit poverty (both on the political left and the political right).
- Miner49er 6y agoHow does the political left exploit poverty? Assuming you mean actually left and not just liberal.
- raverbashing 6y agoNGOs where 80% of the money goes to "admin costs" and 20% go to actual "help" (which is actually debatable if it actually helps depending on the way it is done) Politically motivated/supported unions
- AntiImperialis2 6y agoIn everything it does? Most poor people vote liberal but NONE of the leaders are poor. Knowing this, it makes political sense for them to keep the people poor. What will their priorities be when data shows that people who get out of poverty are likely to care about other issues, I don't know, like mass murder of babies... or race baiting or corruption?
- hardlianotion 6y agoIt is a worry for those thinking about need for a stable society. A rapidly ageing society puts great strain on social cohesion.
- dirtyid 6y ago>So China’s power will decrease a little bit due to aging. But not a huge amount. A shrinking, graying population is likely to alter the country’s domestic politics — in ways that are hard to predict — but it won’t make the country shrivel up and disappear. I've long maintained that Chinese demographic bomb is overplayed and is actually a blessing in disguise. Some considerations: Birthrate of 1.4B people is sufficient to generate more absolute replacement human capital compared to most developing countries, even factoring in immigration. For comparison China has more people than OECD countries combined. This is important in cultivating future competitiveness as long as brain drain is blunted. It's enough to retain advantages for regional power balance. There are still 600M Chinese living on less than 1000rmb per month. This represents a massive internal underclass that can be arbitraged for caretaking and other labour intensive duties for a fraction of the cost. China is both a developed and developing country, this is an advantage that is not going to change until population decline stabilizes. Or rather China cannot be uniformly well/highly developed precisely due to there being too many people. Which leads to the next point. At the height of Chinese export economy, manufacturing sector "only" accounted for 400M jobs. There was also less automation then. The takeaway is world demand is not sufficient to uplift even a majority of Chinese population to barely middle income status. There simply isn't enough global demand or resources for every Chinese to live as well as the west. Manufacturing is increasingly automated, China is rapidly integrating industrial robots to retain industrial base. Even when those 600M can work wages cheaper than Vietnam or Bangladesh. Pending focus on neglected interior development, maybe they will at the expense of rest of region trying to replicate export led development. A lot of issues related to food, energy and resource security would be alleviated with less people. Despite import dependencies, China is also one of the largest domestic producer for many raw resources. A relatively food and energy secure China can start pursuing more flexible foreign policy goals in the 2070s. None of this is to imply it's not a difficult problem, especially socially. But unlike many countries, long term Chinese goals is better met with less people. Demographic dividend can be a demographic curse as well. See India, who needs to (and hasn't) maintained an 8% growth per year just to keep up with employment. Technological paradigms and geopolitics dictates they won't get a fraction of the 400M manufacturing jobs that China did. They're projected to have 1.7B people. That's a recipe for disaster.
- 6y ago
- someluccc 6y agoThe premise of this article is that Total Population = Total National Power, or that raw numbers are somewhat of a proxy for strength and prosperity. It also implies that by necessity a growing old/young ratio will saddle a country by diverting funds from capital investment to taking care of the old. Although most of these claims seem to be “obvious” and logically sound, there are I think a number of caveats to consider: 1. While overall population is shrinking, by and large china is replacing a huge population of low-skill farm and industrial laborers with medium to high-skilled educated workers who are likely to out-earn them by large margins. 2. If anything the problem for the Chinese economy for the past 20 years hasn’t been under-investment but Over-Investment. What that means is that all those ghost cities, empty roads and suboptimally run factories leave a lot of slack in the system for growth to continue at lower investment rates. 3. It may actually benefit China, as it shifts from an export driven to a consumption driven economy to have a large population of idle old people spending money on the economy, it means that the government can grow the economy by directing more funds to people rather than to hard assets whose ROI becomes increasingly dubious. 4. China is investing heavily in AI, automation and creating other types of competitive advantages in order to supersede their historical dependence on raw numbers of cheap labor. Although the judge still is out, I think this article is premised on backward looking assumptions (You need lots of workers to have a growing economy!) rather than forward looking... (what type of society may technology enable us to build?). Furthermore it misses out on how all the investments China has made in the near past will be leveraged in the future. I’d argue that what a small population can do with good infrastructure, education, etc. is orders of magnitude higher than what a huge population can do with poor infra/edu. By any measure even in a hundred years China will still have a working population roughly equal to the west/NATO as a whole... they will also have thousands of miles of bullet trains, subways, roads, waterways and if things go to plan an unrivaled manufacturing capacity and a digital infrastructure (in terms not only of internet connections, but also an ecosystem of big and small companies, VCs, etc) that although powerful in the US is almost nonexistent in europe. 5. China is building a domestic financial infrastructure that is likely to rival that of the west (already how many IPOs were there in Germany, or all of europe ex-UK last year vs NY or HK+Shanghai+Shenzhen?) which will enable it to create a self sustaining domestic ecosystem for allocating capital more effectively. All this goes to say that -and I’m no China shill- that I find the whole article rests on some sort of western progressive complacency that diminishes the scale of geopolitical rivalry that China presents and thinks that we can overlook our problems because in due time the public will come around to some easy, invariably obvious, solution. For instance, if you think that national power derives from sheer numbers of people the logical conclusion is that all the west’s problems will be solved once massive numbers of immigrants -mostly uneducated- are let in. Nevertheless although there is undoubtedly a role that immigration can play in growth (just look at the number of companies started by first or second generation immigrants) I think this obfuscates the real factors that enable economic growth and which often times are opposed by the type of facile progressive arguments that often underlie pieces like this and are also often against business and growth friendly policies. In particular I don’t think that immigrants themselves are that important if you think of them without also considering the enabling factors, such that it wasn’t Elon Musk alone that made paypal/tesla/spacex, but Elon Musk + America. Why I say this is that I believe China is heavily investing to make this type of thing a reality there and so I think any analysis of the country that looks at it through “anyplace-glasses” errs, because in fact we should look at China through “exceptional-place-glasses” and more importantly, we should think more about what the consequences may be for the future of all of us outside China of an exceptional place fully becoming its own but with an almost all-powerful 21st century tech enabled authoritarian regime.
- obblekk 6y ago"Raising children in China is extremely expensive" I do wish more countries thought about childcare as part of their industrial policy and engineered large social changes to make it easier for parents to raise children. Basic things: free, organized weekend activities (give parents back some leisure time), free babysitter services from teens on wednesday nights (give parents back going out nights), free child care accessories like carseats, diapers, bottles, etc (stop the implicit massive tax on having a child). Imagine if we lived in a society where public school didn't exist. It would be virtually impossible to raise children while earning income. We live in that world in many regards, and then wonder why people don't want to have kids.
- justaman 6y ago>Imagine if we lived in a society where public school didn't exist. This assumes the market wouldn't self correct and private schools became the norm.
- da_big_ghey 6y agoIndeed, and the rise of charter schools shows that it is very doable to run a private school on less than the amount of tax money allocated per-child.
- KittenInABox 6y agoThat's because charter schools intentionally decline expensive students- students who need occupational therapists, school psychologists, social workers, special education programs, remedial schooling, etc. When you look into what it means to have a public school system it really means that the system is expected to support everyone, including the neediest and most expensive students. So of course by declining these students charter schools can boast being much cheaper.
- whatshisface 6y agoThat's an interesting proposal, could you link something that breaks down the numbers? Special needs schools are separate from normal schools, so I can see how such a calculation might be possible.
- throwaway4good 6y agoGiven that much of China is poor and underdeveloped there is still plenty of workforce to be had for decades to come.
- NDizzle 6y ago"Cool, we're talking about GnR on HN!" .... oh
- tibbydudeza 6y agoIt is unlikely that we are going to have millions of African nevermind Indian immigrants living in China considering the current problem with religious non Han minorities. 1. Locate the factories in Africa as it is huge and has untapped natural resources. 2. Establish special economic zones in China where immigrants can enjoy a higher standard of living than back home but with no possibility of citizenship or even settling there in the long term.
- whoevercares 6y agoTo be honest, CCP can turnaround such policy in one night if they make the decision
- hker 6y agoAnnouncing or implementing such policy is one thing, making sure the policy has the intended effect is another. Racial and cultural integration is not easy. Singapore could do this with its small size and hands-on approach (ethnic makeup of apartment buildings is dictated by law), but even America has difficulty doing so. At Chinese scale, it may lead to worse than what Uyghurs are being treated in Xinjiang.
- someperson 6y agoThe CCP implemented the One Child Policy and left it in place for 35 years which greatly contributed to China's current predicament. The old propaganda that they are a government of technocrats who can make good farsighted decisions without the pressure of elections has proved wrong time and again.
- msluyter 6y agoTangential: Noah Smith is one of the more rewarding people to follow on Twitter. He often posts long, thoughtful threads. I've learned a lot from them.
- tcgv 6y agoAnother factor to take into account is the proportion of rural chinese workers that are still able to / in the process of migrating to urban centers. As their roles in the rural economy is replaced by automation they could potentially compensate for the loss of urban workforce due to retirement.
- nine_zeros 6y agoThis is not apocalypse for highly populated countries like China and India. They have enough people who can replace current workers. They won't have a shortage in food production because the land exists and can be consolidated to fewer farmers. There is a surplus of hands still out there who can take up manufacturing. By the time China really faces mass declines like Japan, they will already have a significant portion of their economy transformed into a knowledge/information economy. In fact, a lowering population but increasing gdp will actually increase gdp per capita. The living people there will become richer per capita. For developed countries with already low populations, the story is different. Fewer hands means lesser manufacturing which means lower gdp and thus, lesser power in the global stage.
- tuatoru 6y agoIf you're interested in demographic trends I recommended populationpyramid.net, which presents UN population projections visually. Demography is one of few areas of social science where decade-scale prediction is reasonable. As well as China, check out projections for India, Indonesia, the USA, Brazil, and Nigeria. (And then Japan, Mexico, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Egypt.) The global demographic transition will form a mostly unremarked-on background to events this century. 1. https://www.populationpyramid.net/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/