CHINA’S POPULATION DECLINES: YOUNG GENERATIONS DO NOT WANT TO HAVE CHILDREN

THE WORLD’S MOST POPULOUS COUNTRY HAS REACHED A CRUCIAL MOMENT

China’s population has begun to shrink, after a steady, yearslong decline in its birthrate that experts say is irreversible.

The government said that 9.56 million people were born in China last year, while 10.41 million people died. It was the first time deaths had outnumbered births in China since the Great Leap Forward, Mao Zedong’s failed economic experiment that led to widespread famine and death in the 1960s.

YOUNG GENERATIONS WANT TO HAVE FEWER CHILDREN OR ANY AT ALL

Beijing has tried to reverse the country’s falling fertility rate by relaxing its strict rules on family size, such as the controversial One Child Policy. In 2021, the Chinese government allowed all households to have up to three children. The policy changes haven’t stopped the decline in China’s fertility rate.

Young generations want to have fewer children or they do not want to have any in order to achieve a better economic balance in their lives. Having a child is expensive and it is why they are thinking twice before having children.

The COVID pandemic also caused couples to delay having children, due to economic uncertainty and the disruption from China’s tough COVID-zero policy.

GOVERNMENT NEEDS TO ENCOURAGE YOUNG PEOPLE TO HAVE MORE CHILDREN

A shrinking population presents a major economic challenge for China. It will reduce the supply of labor, putting upward pressure on Chinese wages and increasing labor costs. As China’s population ages, the government will also have to spend more money on elder care and other social welfare systems.

It is clear millennials and gen z do not want to have children because they are thinking about the world they are going to inherit to their future children.