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Last week, China released the highly anticipated statistics of its seventh national census. Falling birth rate, which was only 1,3 in 2020, was one of the hot topics. Ning Jizhe, China’s head of the statistics bureau and deputy director of the steering group for the seventh national census,put it bluntly, “Low fertility rate will become a real problem for China.”
What is holding back the young parents then?
For a typical Chinese urban family, the arrival of a new life usually means the parents-in-law will have to move in with the young couple to help with the chores. This is by no means a temporary arrangement. The four adults may well spend more than a decade together under one roof because the child needs constant care when the young parents have to work extra time in the office or go on business trips.
This means the family with more than one child will have to spend more on housing for the extra space they need. In big cities, it could be an added expenditure of hundreds of thousands of US dollars. Not every two-children family can afford it of course. Those with limited means have to squeeze themselves into a small two-bedroom apartment, no more than 60 square meters perhaps. The packed rooms, increased spending on childcare products, and complicated in-law relations puts enormous economic and psychological pressure on the new parents.
Most Chinese mothers cannot afford to quit their jobs to take care of their babies. According to a 2021 survey of working Chinese moms conducted by a leading job search website in China, 45,2 percent of the respondents say their incomes account for 10 to 30 percent of their family income; for 36,2 percent of them, the share goes up to 30 to 50 percent. Education of their children and housing are the big-ticket items.
This is not only the case in the big cities. Monthly spending on a child, including food, clothes, other consumables, and the various learning courses, may well exceed 700 US dollars in a medium-sized city. In the less developed regions and small counties where average salaries may only reach 500 US dollars, expenses on a child could still be 150 US dollars, nearly one third of an adult’s income.
Some parent cite the exorbitant costs for education as the biggest challenge. In a provincial capital city in Northwest China where income levels are not high, a piano course could cost over US$1 000 a year and a child usually goes to a number of such workshops at the same time, such as chess, swimming, and Lego, taking the total spending to as high as US$10 000. On Chinese social media, parents jokingly call their children the “four-legged gold-swallowing beast” to show their frustration with how fast their purse is being depleted.
Another big problem for parents hoping to have a second child is the lack of support for child care. The young, highly-educated Chinese women today are not as willing as those in the past decades to give up their career to be a housewife.
Childcare facilities are in short supply too. According to the statistics of China’s National Health Commission, only 5 percent of Chinese kids aged between 0 are 3 are have nurseries to go to. The overwhelming of them are taken care of at home by their grandparents. Nannies are expensive too. A good nanny may well cost somewhere between US$1 000 and 15 000 a month, sometimes even higher than the salary of the white-collar mother. And China has not yet developed a well-regulated domestic services industry. It can be extremely difficulty find a nanny with basic professional training, a good educational background, and work ethics.
Even after a child turns three, nice nurseries are still hard to find. Some private ones offer very good facilities, but at a high price. The public ones are less expensive and more trustworthy, but the positions are so few that kids and their parents may have to go through interviews and even register their intention during pregnancy to get a place.
When the child reaches schooling age, the competition for a good school comes, beginning with purchasing a pricey apartment in a neighbourhood with good educational resources.
Before the government introduces more policies to support young couples in education, childcare, housing and all the associate challenges, it could be very hard to persuade them to welcome another “four-legged gold-swelling beast” into their small home.
Online Reporter