China has been capitalist since Deng Xiaoping pushed open market reforms beginning in 1978. I’ll grant you the one child policy has nothing to do with capitalism, though. Still doesn’t explain why other nations have similarly low birth rates, though.
They have low birthrates because of education. Has nothing to do with capitalism. Look at all the places that have free healthcare and safety nets. All of them have declining birth rates. It’s just something that comes with not having to fight for food and shelter to survive. Poor nations have more kids because the odds are stacked against them reaching adulthood.
Fertility rates tend to be higher in poorly resourced countries but due to high maternal and perinatal mortality, there is a reduction in birth rates. In developing countries children are needed as a labour force and to provide care for their parents in old age. In these countries, fertility rates are higher due to the lack of access to contraceptives and generally lower levels of female education. The social structure, religious beliefs, economic prosperity and urbanisation within each country are likely to affect birth rates as well as abortion rates, Developed countries tend to have a lower fertility rate due to lifestyle choices associated with economic affluence where mortality rates are low, birth control is easily accessible and children often can become an economic drain caused by housing, education cost and other cost involved in bringing up children. Higher education and professional careers often mean that women have children late in life. This can result in a demographic economic paradox.
A broad correlation that throws an alternative set of proposed explanations isn’t evidence that other proposed explanations are false. I’m sure you’ll find data among developed countries that shows people are citing the cost of raising children as a major factor for not having more children. You might even find that places which make child rearing cheaper and easier have higher fertility rates than those that don’t. It’s perhaps possible that the proposed hand wavy explanation about lifestyle choices and child mortality in the developed world is pure correlation and there’s another factor that is driving this which occurred alongside that economic development. Like I don’t know, increased cost of living and child rearing, disappearance of safety nets, increase in precarity of work, you know - the gifts of 50 years of neoliberal economics. 🥹
South Korea and Japan are both paying people to have kids, same with Singapore, it’s a major battle to get people there to have children. NPR recently did this article on it.
Is it enough? For an article that discusses this, it’s odd it doesn’t mention what it costs to raise a child. Paying money to parents without considering the cost isn’t very meaningful.
A quick search tells me that:
South Korea is the most expensive country in the world to raise a child to the age of 18, according to a recent study, a finding that provides a clear explanation for the nation’s falling fertility rate and the looming population crisis.
The annual study by the Beijing-based YuWa Population Research Institute ranked South Korea top of the list of nations for raising a child, with the cost coming to 7.79 times the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, Chosun Ilbo, a South Korean newspaper, reported. That works out as KRW365 million (€251,562, $271,957). [1]
And China is close second:
China is second on the list, with the cost of bringing up a child 6.9 times per capita GDP, followed by Germany at 3.64 times and France at 2.24 times. [1]
Country
Cost
Fertility
SK
7.79
0.9
China
6.9
1.2
Germany
3.64
1.5
France
2.24
1.8
These four data points show an inverse correlation between cost of raising a child and fertility. This is obviously not a comprehensive analysis but it serves the purpose to show that perhaps fertility isn’t disconnected from cost of raising children in the developed world. And perhaps material like the NPR article which talk about the government “giving up” are more about creating a narrative that gets people to accept immigration as a solution, rather than digging into problems that would require wage increases and wealth transfers from the top towards the bottom. It should be obvious which classes are served by each solution.
Unfortunately that solution is tried and true, so the ones that try it will get results that they can then point to as a success. States that banned abortions are already seeing increases in childbirths.
On the plus side, fewer workers means more competition which leads to better wages. This will eventually show corporations that if they want workers they need to pay well. This could well be a turning point.
This is only true under the assumption that corporations cannot turn the state to enforce forced labor, which has precedent in the past. I don’t think it’s highly likely in this day and age, outside of some fascist leaning places but who knows.
How do you know there’s plenty of fucking going on in East Asia? Are you in the Ministry of Surveillance, bedroom edition? 😛
Seriously, though, overwork can indeed destroy the sex lives of people completely and when an extreme work ethic is the cultural norm, it logically follows that the people aren’t going to have as much sex as they otherwise would.
In the case of China, it probably doesn’t help that the one child policy was so recent that having more than one child is likely still considered strange if not downright wrong.
Living in east Asia (Japan in my case) for nearly a decade. Sex definitely happens. There are various sex workers as well that seems to have no lack of business. Many people talking about wanting to get laid and their success in so doing.
With dual incomes bring increasingly required and bad work-life balance (to oversimplify some complex issues) as well as a lack of affordable daycare where the jobs are (various considerations and a lottery system in Tokyo) and similar issues, babies are always something "to do later". For people who have one, there are other issues after that which do tend to reduce sex life, including the work situation but also kids in the bed for years co-sleeping, which make it harder to have sex generally let alone have more kids at a certain point but this is another topic, I think
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