Not having children means paying more tax, or paying for other people's children? Where do these bizarre arguments come from?

In recent days, the debate about having children has reached a new climax.

First, Xinhua Daily published an article proposing the establishment of a maternity fund system, suggesting that citizens under 40, regardless of gender, must pay a certain proportion of their salary into a maternity fund every year. If a citizen has not had a second child, the funds in the account would only be withdrawn upon retirement.

CCTV.com published an article questioning the proposal to establish a maternity fund system

Netizens had not even finished mocking this proposal when, today, a suggestion from Hu Jiye, a professor at China University of Political Science and Law, added fuel to the fire:In the future, not only could a maternity fund system be established to encourage childbirth, but a "social maintenance tax" should also be levied on DINK families.

He said that the reason the Chinese nation has been able to stand proudly among the nations of the world is that it gradually formed the culture of "there are three forms of unfilial conduct, of which the worst is to have no descendants," and that "childbearing culture is a carrier of the excellent traditional culture of the Chinese nation; first of all, from a cultural perspective, we should encourage it."

He gave an example, saying that from the broad sweep of history, if a male in a family had no children, he could not enter the ancestral hall.

These suggestions drew merciless ridicule from netizens. In response to the criticism, Hu Jiye, a professor at China University of Political Science and Law, also responded: his idea of establishing a maternity fund to encourage childbirth was that it should be set up from the social maintenance fees that the state had collected for so many years, and that ordinary people should no longer have to pay;since DINK families need other people's children to support them in old age, this should not be encouraged or promoted.

However, some netizens still were not convinced and interpreted these suggestions as paying money to raise other people's children, or having to pay more tax if you do not have children. They believed that whether to have children is a personal freedom, and on what grounds should someone who does not have children have to pay more? And why should they pay money themselves to raise other people's children?

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The demographic outlook is not optimistic, and policies to encourage childbirth have not met expectations

The emergence of these "bizarre arguments" to stimulate childbirth is inseparable from China's unoptimistic demographic outlook.

The National Bureau of Statistics announced earlier this year that in 2017, the total number of births in mainland China was 17.23 million, a decrease of 630,000 from the previous year.

Worse still, according to the 2010 census data, within the next ten years the number of women in China in their peak childbearing years will decrease by about 40%.Zhang Juwei, vice president of the China Population Association, said that China's fertility rate is falling too fast, and its aging is the fastest in the world.

A declining birth rate will cause the population structure to age continuously and economic vitality to keep declining, and these in turn may further suppress the fertility level.

Population scholar Yao Meixiong judged that China's future population will show a structurally distorted state of severe low fertility combined with rapid aging and an imbalanced sex ratio among the marriageable population, which will lead to problems such as reduced labor supply, weakened consumption and innovation capacity, increased pressure on elderly care, and insufficient momentum for economic development.

It can be seen that whether people have children has already affected the country's development prospects. People's Daily Overseas Edition recently published an article titled "Having a baby is a family matter and a national matter; incentive policies cannot be used to draw a flatbread to satisfy hunger." The article proposed that China achieved great development by relying on its huge demographic dividend, and that in the face of a low fertility rate, the government should adopt more targeted measures to solve the problem and satisfy the people's yearning for and pursuit of a better life.

In fact, on encouraging childbirth, the central government's policies have kept following up, and the signals released have become increasingly clear. From the selective two-child policy to the universal two-child policy, and then to the central government's proposal a few days ago to formulate national standards for family planning assistance and support subsidies.

However, ironically, while top-level design frequently expresses support for relaxing childbirth, there are still places implementing measures to restrict childbirth.A few days ago, Zhecheng County in Henan said it would begin levying a social maintenance fee for a third child, mainly targeting families with three or more children, with the levy standard set at three times the couple's net income in the previous year.

Although policies have been continuously loosened, the results have been less than ideal. Health and family planning commissions in various places disclosed that the number of newborns in the first half of 2018 fell by about 15%-20% year on year. This means that the number of births in 2018 will still decline considerably compared with 2017.

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Why exactly do people no longer want to have children?

First, people's willingness to marry is no longer as strong.According to statistics from the Ministry of Civil Affairs, last year the national marriage registration rate fell by 7%, already the fourth consecutive year of decline.If people do not even want to marry, then naturally even fewer want to have children.

The reason for this is naturally inseparable from the persistently high housing prices.According to reports, housing prices near key primary schools in Yinchuan have already soared to 10,000 yuan per sq m.Young people born in the 1980s and 1990s cannot afford to buy houses and cannot enjoy school district education resources or supporting medical resources, which naturally affects their willingness to have children.

Another thing to consider is the cost of raising children. A few days ago, an article titled "Half a year's salary cannot support a child's one summer vacation" went viral, saying that the cost of a child's various study tours, interest classes, and tutoring classes during one summer vacation was as high as nearly 30,000 yuan. Many people could not resist reposting it with the comment: "You really cannot afford to raise them!" A media survey found that it is already the norm for a family to spend around 10,000 yuan on a child during the summer vacation.

In addition to these economic reasons, research shows that the improvement of women's education level and the independence and elevation of women's economic status are contradictory to raising the fertility rate.The higher the level of education, the more inclined women are to have fewer children.

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The shift in the focus of debate:

Whether to have children, how to encourage it, and where the money for encouragement should come from

The matter of having children has been debated back and forth, and the focus has shifted several times. From whether to relax the policy to allow a second child a few years ago, to whether to fully implement the two-child policy afterward, and now to whether to fully relax childbirth, which has also entered the public discourse.

However, the more deadlocked point of debate now is how to use economic means to boost the fertility rate, which remains sluggish even under relaxed policies.And where should the money used for the boost come from? Should existing state finances be used, or should citizens "crowdfund" to raise children?

Source:People's Daily, Xinhua Daily

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