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Thank you for this perspective. Coming from a naive place - why is china childless? I know there was a "one child policy" many years ago and I don't think it's

Thank you for this perspective. Coming from a naive place - why is china childless? I know there was a "one child policy" many years ago and I don't think it's there now - why aren't people having kids? Here in the west we obviously have low birth rates too, having to do with erosion of gender roles and family values and woke excuses like "it's bad for the environment." I don't imagine those factors to be in play in China - what is?

chii 3y ago
I think it's a similar reason to the west's low birth rate : women have more choice and therefore, a larger portion is choosing to have kids later in life (or are finding it more difficult to get a partner, as they require one that surpasses themselves in earning/status etc). I think you will find that rural areas of china has a higher birth rate than urban areas, as the opportunities in rural areas are fewer. But as more and more people move to urban areas for economic prosperity, the same birthrate will befall them just like in western advanced economies.
JackMorgan 3y ago
Low birth rates are happening because no one has enough money for kids and a place to house them even with two working parents. Not because of "woke excuses" and "erosion of gender roles". Correlation does not imply causation. Try giving every couple in America a 5x raise and a free house and watch a ton of kids be born the next five years. Your argument is similar to saying "no one buys houses anymore because everyone is obsessed with tiny houses and van dwelling". No, they are obsessed with these things because it's the only thing they have any chance of affording. If you split up the wealth concentrated in the top 1%, so we have an economy more like the 1950s, every family is about 2.5 million dollars richer. That's a house, only one spouse working, maybe a vacation house, two cars, and several kids. Sounds like what life was like in the 1950 right? It wasn't the woke boogyman after all, it was unions and labor getting a fair share of their efforts. Instead we have people living with roommates and parents trying to save enough money just to survive. This nonsense that no one is having kids because of "family values" and "morals" is billionaire propaganda to distract everyone from the fact that they took all our money, and we need unions to get it back. Not more church, not getting rid of woke (whatever that means). Unions, we need unions and strong labor protections to get our money back from the billionaires who took it inch by inch for the last 70 years. [1] [1] https://youtu.be/mcgC-kuPEuo?si=KDvDPEYjTZtbqOeM https://youtu.be/mcgC-kuPEuo?si=KDvDPEYjTZtbqOeM
- thedailymail 3y ago
  Agree with many of your points, but to make the 84+ million families in the US richer by $2.5 million each would require more than 200 trillion dollars. (Current GDP is around $25 trillion.)
  - JackMorgan 3y ago
    Good point, it seems the top 10% owns 100 trillion [1], so spreading that to the remaining 74 million families would only result in a net increase of 1.2 million per family. I must have found an inaccurate source for the previously stated 2.5 million. Math now corrected, I still want my extra 1.2 million back. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_Unite...
- xyzelement 3y ago
  I appreciate your chain of logic but don’t agree with it. If what you are saying was true, rich families would have more kids than poor families in the US and the opposite is true. The families that had 5/7 kids a hundred years ago were objectively way poorer than the “I can’t afford a kid” crowd today.
  - orwin 3y ago
    Rich families do have more kids than working poor families in all western nations. If you're a poor, 2 person household in a city, you have two main choices (all other choices means leaving the city you live in) : - Work and stay poor, but comfortable enough. This means maybe getting enough money on the side to buy a big appartement then start a family at 40-45 yo (20 years ago you had the same choice, except the age was 30-35. It's worst in more expensive cities). - Try to get on welfare and have kids asap. You'll have to live in a worse area, with less disposable income, you'll be a bit hungry sometimes, but it might be worth it. If you have family/support system in the area whose reputation can protect you from the worse, it's all good (hence 2nd and 3rd gen immigrants have more opportunities to make this choice, as their support system is often stronger than 5th-Xth gen immigrants or native Americans). Do you have kids yourself? Are you a low-income worker? How much do you have each months after paying rent+utilities+food? Because I remember clearly my parents earning less than that cost, and trying to do calculations to avoid downgrading to a smaller house. They couldn't avoid it and I shared a room with my brother until I was 16, when I joined a 'boarding school' (closest translation I could find, but it was public, free and not at all like Anglo boarding schools).
Supermancho 3y ago
It's important to consider social nets. The poor don't have children in China, regardless of the existing Chinese social programs. These programs favor the working class and penalize children (who produce nothing). The younger poor practice varying degrees of Tang ping (Lying Flat) to survive, with the amenities their peers share, and that doesn't work with children. Interviews with single women in China are largely in Chinese (as you would expect) and the answers were economic related 80% of the time in 2019. No, I don't have a Chinese whitepaper to point to. There's just no evidence to the contrary, since it's been the trend for a number of years. ---- It's also important to consider the pollution. Acid rain, thick soot smog, polluted city water wells, and unbelievably poor food prep/regulation are all commonplace. This has impacted fertility rates across the board, but especially in females. The Chinese population is roughly 1.2:1 male to female, under the current 3-child policy enacted ~2016.

chii 3y ago

I think it's a similar reason to the west's low birth rate : women have more choice and therefore, a larger portion is choosing to have kids later in life (or are finding it more difficult to get a partner, as they require one that surpasses themselves in earning/status etc). I think you will find that rural areas of china has a higher birth rate than urban areas, as the opportunities in rural areas are fewer. But as more and more people move to urban areas for economic prosperity, the same birthrate will befall them just like in western advanced economies.

JackMorgan 3y ago

Low birth rates are happening because no one has enough money for kids and a place to house them even with two working parents. Not because of "woke excuses" and "erosion of gender roles". Correlation does not imply causation. Try giving every couple in America a 5x raise and a free house and watch a ton of kids be born the next five years. Your argument is similar to saying "no one buys houses anymore because everyone is obsessed with tiny houses and van dwelling". No, they are obsessed with these things because it's the only thing they have any chance of affording. If you split up the wealth concentrated in the top 1%, so we have an economy more like the 1950s, every family is about 2.5 million dollars richer. That's a house, only one spouse working, maybe a vacation house, two cars, and several kids. Sounds like what life was like in the 1950 right? It wasn't the woke boogyman after all, it was unions and labor getting a fair share of their efforts. Instead we have people living with roommates and parents trying to save enough money just to survive. This nonsense that no one is having kids because of "family values" and "morals" is billionaire propaganda to distract everyone from the fact that they took all our money, and we need unions to get it back. Not more church, not getting rid of woke (whatever that means). Unions, we need unions and strong labor protections to get our money back from the billionaires who took it inch by inch for the last 70 years. [1] [1] https://youtu.be/mcgC-kuPEuo?si=KDvDPEYjTZtbqOeM https://youtu.be/mcgC-kuPEuo?si=KDvDPEYjTZtbqOeM

thedailymail 3y ago
Agree with many of your points, but to make the 84+ million families in the US richer by $2.5 million each would require more than 200 trillion dollars. (Current GDP is around $25 trillion.)
- JackMorgan 3y ago
  Good point, it seems the top 10% owns 100 trillion [1], so spreading that to the remaining 74 million families would only result in a net increase of 1.2 million per family. I must have found an inaccurate source for the previously stated 2.5 million. Math now corrected, I still want my extra 1.2 million back. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_Unite...
xyzelement 3y ago
I appreciate your chain of logic but don’t agree with it. If what you are saying was true, rich families would have more kids than poor families in the US and the opposite is true. The families that had 5/7 kids a hundred years ago were objectively way poorer than the “I can’t afford a kid” crowd today.
- orwin 3y ago
  Rich families do have more kids than working poor families in all western nations. If you're a poor, 2 person household in a city, you have two main choices (all other choices means leaving the city you live in) : - Work and stay poor, but comfortable enough. This means maybe getting enough money on the side to buy a big appartement then start a family at 40-45 yo (20 years ago you had the same choice, except the age was 30-35. It's worst in more expensive cities). - Try to get on welfare and have kids asap. You'll have to live in a worse area, with less disposable income, you'll be a bit hungry sometimes, but it might be worth it. If you have family/support system in the area whose reputation can protect you from the worse, it's all good (hence 2nd and 3rd gen immigrants have more opportunities to make this choice, as their support system is often stronger than 5th-Xth gen immigrants or native Americans). Do you have kids yourself? Are you a low-income worker? How much do you have each months after paying rent+utilities+food? Because I remember clearly my parents earning less than that cost, and trying to do calculations to avoid downgrading to a smaller house. They couldn't avoid it and I shared a room with my brother until I was 16, when I joined a 'boarding school' (closest translation I could find, but it was public, free and not at all like Anglo boarding schools).

Supermancho 3y ago

It's important to consider social nets. The poor don't have children in China, regardless of the existing Chinese social programs. These programs favor the working class and penalize children (who produce nothing). The younger poor practice varying degrees of Tang ping (Lying Flat) to survive, with the amenities their peers share, and that doesn't work with children. Interviews with single women in China are largely in Chinese (as you would expect) and the answers were economic related 80% of the time in 2019. No, I don't have a Chinese whitepaper to point to. There's just no evidence to the contrary, since it's been the trend for a number of years. ---- It's also important to consider the pollution. Acid rain, thick soot smog, polluted city water wells, and unbelievably poor food prep/regulation are all commonplace. This has impacted fertility rates across the board, but especially in females. The Chinese population is roughly 1.2:1 male to female, under the current 3-child policy enacted ~2016.