Why do Chinese people not want kids anymore?

[This isn’t a real essay or anything. I got inspired by the new study and hurriedly typed this out over the course of a couple of days while dealing with vomiting kids. Read it like the ramblings of an amateur on the internet please.]

Okay, so, this study showing that China is the second most expensive country to raise kids in has been brought to my attention, and I gotta say, I’m really happy someone did an actual statistic analysis into this. Because I have read a LOT of different bloggers and experts’ takes on the issue of “Why Chinese people don’t want to have kids anymore?” And a lot of reasons have been brought up, ranging from “bride price is too expensive” to “women’s standards are too high” to “But giving birth is scary!” to “I dunno, the Jews??” And these takes must be very popular, because whenever the government tries to raise birth rates, it’s usually by capping bride price, or reducing quotas for divorces or extending maternity leave.

And so far, at least, none of these measures have accomplished anything, because I don’t think they address the root problem. I think China has a….different sort of problem with birth rate than the typical case. The problem was never why people don’t want kids. I’ve never seen a group of people more enthusiastically, desperately wanting kids than Chinese people. Chinese people may want kids more than anyone else in the world.

I’ve said, since day one, ever since I was a kid myself, that the main reason people aren’t having kids in China is because they just can’t afford it. This study is a really good look into the issue, but I just wanted to write up a little essay adding my thoughts here, because I think this study is very much a conservative take on the issue. Where they can, they took the lowest estimate. The actual problem is much, much worse than it looks on paper.

Just to be clear here, I’m not criticising this study at all! It makes sense that you want to make your claims as defensible as possible, so underestimating is much better than overestimating. But when the study says that it costs, on average, 538,000 RMB to raise a child, that is not the number young people in China have to keep in mind when they are making their decisions about whether or not to have a child.

First of all, it needs to be highlighted, that the claim “China is the second most costly country in the world to raise a child” compares the cost of childrearing to GDP per capita, where China’s is 6.3 times GDP per capita. But if you’re an actual person in Chinese society right now, making a decision on whether you’re ready to have a child, it probably makes more sense to look at the cost of childrearing to average disposable income (that is, income after tax, the amount of money you actually get to spend). And we can see here, based on China’s own Bureau of Statistics, average national disposable income is 39,218 RMB per year. The expense listed above, 538,000 RMB—that is the cost to raise a child to 18 years old. So if you divide it by 18, we get roughly 29,888 RMB per year. That’s 76% of your income! Just putting those numbers next to each other is horrifying.

Maybe it’s a little less horrifying if you assume two-income households on average. That doubles household disposable income, at least. But the problem is, having a child involves so much more than just raising them to 18 in…pretty much any society, but much more a Chinese one. Culture matters a lot here. And as an average person, making the decision of whether or not to have a child, you’re going to have to assume that you must support them through college at least. With youth unemployment as high as it has been, a lot of young people have been delaying the inevitable by going into postgrad degrees, or preparing for the civil servant exam for several years. Out of about 10 million college graduates every year, about 4 million of them will go on to get a Master’s Degree, and 2 million of those are going to go for a civil servant exam, which will take years of preparation on its own.

Realistically speaking, as an average person, you’re probably going to go along with cultural trends that you have to support your kids so long as they’re doing something “legitimately productive” to their life. You probably can’t stand up to the social pressure and scrutiny of kicking them out the second they turn 18. You need to be mentally prepared to continue supporting your child until they’re 24-25, at least. So that 538K number probably has to be multiplied by 1.5x.

But you’re not done there either. Remember my essay about the real estate market, how one of the factors inflating the real estate bubble was the fact that a lot of basic social benefits in society are tied to owning a house? Without one, your children can’t go to public schools. You can’t go to public hospitals. And China has almost no protections for renters. And so, another assumed “duty” of the parents is to buy a house for their sons, at a minimum. Not to mention saving up for a bride price/dowry. That’s easily another 500K to a million, depending on where you live.

Well, at least it only applies to boys (if you can stand your daughter hating you for your sexism for not buying her a house). And just like supporting your kids through college, you’re not technically legally obligated to do this. You can refuse to, if you can withstand the social judgement and being estranged from the kids you raised. But there is something you can’t refuse to pay—an expense you can be court ordered to pony up.

And that’s supporting your parents.

It’s China’s solution to the looming bankruptcy of the social security system (though, some would argue whether it’s ever not been bankrupt. At this rate, it might be possible that not a single person who’s actually paid into social security will see a cent back from it). They offset the cost on the government, by transferring it to the people. You are legally obligated to pay for your parents, and this is something very strictly legally enforced. China has extremely lax child protection laws. You could, if you really want to, raise a kid for dirt cheap. You can never buy food for your kids and make them scavenge in the trash, or never buy proper clothes for them, and the police won’t really care. But you cannot refuse to support your parents, because they can sue you in court.

How much does that cost? Well, if you do force your parents to sue you in court, the ruling is typically 20-30% of your earnings. But that’s just money to keep them alive on a day to day basis. If they get sick, as old people tend to do, and wrack up a fortune in medical bills, who’s responsible for that? That’s right, it’s you! If you don’t pay it, they can still sue you in court and make you! And anyone who’s looked into any country’s healthcare system knows that the vast majority of expenses are spent in old people. The amount of money you’re potentially on the hook for could be theoretically unlimited. It’s something you need to be saving up for your whole life.

I'm sure when the government came up with this solution to not having enough money in social security, they thought they were really smart. People have criticised all kinds of government policies online, but I don’t see a lot of people ever riling about this one, because “filial piety” is just as baked into Chinese culture as “supporting your kids through college”. It wasn’t hard to convince people that this is their duty, given that it’s been their duty for thousands of years. Everyone just naturally accepts that it’s a fair and equivalent exchange that your parents raise you and support you until adulthood, and you raise and support them until death. You owe it to them.

In fact, for the people who are having kids, when they’re asked why they decided on having kids, that is the top reason listed: “To have someone to take care of me in old age.” 养儿防老—having a kid protects you in old age. It’s a very popular saying. You can tell too, because all the fearmongering story of, “What’ll happen to you if you don’t have kids?” are all some variation of, “You’ll be old and alone and nobody will take you to the hospital.”

Except that’s literally not how society works. Your parents are supposed to raise you and support you, so that you can use your resources to raise and support your own kids. That’s literally how next generations come into existence!

Not only is having a child expensive, but children are, generally speaking, not considered valid assets by banks. Unlike buying a car or a house, you can’t use children as collateral to get a mortgage and slowly pay it back overtime. Unlike buying a car or a house, you can’t even necessarily just patiently save up money while you’re young to eventually afford it when your career really gets on track, because the best time to have children is generally when you’re young—especially if your goal is to have multiples of them.

All of this added together means that having even one child is a burden that average young couples just can’t shoulder on their own.

Look. I love kids. I have kids of my own. They’re, like, definitely in the Top 10 Best Things in My Life list. But if I lived in China, I would be childfree, because there is no way I can afford the simplest part of just buying formula for them (assuming I worked in the same job in the same industry), much less all the tutoring and hobbies and college they’re going to require later on.

How do people do it? With the support of three families and six wallets, as the saying goes. Your parents, your spouse’s parents, and yourselves all pitch in just to afford one child. Sometimes, when that isn’t enough, particularly sexist families will even have a couple of girls in addition to their son, just to feed them the humanly minimum growing up and send them to start working in a sweatshop as soon as they turn 15, to give their money to their brother so that he can afford a child. Not just money—people pitch in their time too, because childcare for babies under 3 years old basically doesn’t exist in China. Even if they existed, they certainly don’t run long enough to accommodate parents working 996 jobs. The only thing available is one-on-one nannies, and those cost 8000+ RMB a month. So grandparents on both sides babysit and pitch in all their retirement money and probably work past retirement, while young people work all day and all night to pay off their house.

So people absolutely do want to have kids. They might want to have kids more than anything else in their life. Or maybe “want” is the wrong word. It’s probably more accurate to say that culturally speaking, a lot of people still think it’s their duty to have kids. China’s problem was never feminism making all the women not want kids. China’s problem is that a single can of formula costs 225 RMB and babies finish one of those in 3 days flat. China’s problem is that tutoring lessons are 800+ RMB an hour, and you can’t pass exams without them.

So how did things get this bad? Why are children so expensive in China? What’s going on here?

There’s a lot of factors here, some more influential, others less. For one thing, China’s real estate values were overinflated as fuck for a while, and not only does this mean you’re paying a bigger mortgage when you buy a house big enough to raise a child in, but it means the cost of the rent of baby item stores get passed onto the consumer. For another, China’s sales tax on children’s items (such as formula, diapers, baby clothes etc) is 11.9%! That number is bonkers to me! If you buy your baby items from overseas, that goes up to 17%!

But I think most importantly, it’s because people are scared of buying cheap baby items in China. After all, the whole reason why overseas formula is so popular in China is because China’s own biggest formula company was discovered putting melamine in their formula, killing 300,000 babies. Here, in America, I can go to the clearance section of Walmart and buy a pack of 9 Gerber outfits for babies for 18 USD. That option absolutely exists in China, if you go to the shadiest of markets. But I can throw the Gerber clothes on my baby, straight out of the pack, never even washing it. I never dared buy my children cheap clothes in China, but I’ve bought myself cheaper outfits (by that, I mean still several hundred RMB), and it gave me rashes for days.

So people have learned they can’t trust cheap products. Sometimes, they can’t trust Chinese products at all. So they’re forced to buy America/Canadian/Australian/European baby items, and with the RMB exchange rate, all of that is going to be a huge burden on the average family.

And that’s because China just…doesn’t punish companies for making unsafe products. The formula that gave babies permanent kidney damage? A father in Beijing sued the company for 3 million RMB and was arrested for “extortion” as a result and sentenced to 5 years in prison. Although they eventually overturned his case (8 years later, after he served all of his time, and walked away from jail with permanent disabilities due to torture), he never did get his money.

And he is far from the only person this has happened to.

So if you’re not wealthy enough to have everything you buy for your baby tested by a lab, what can you do? All you can do is try to err on the side of caution and buy the most expensive items on the market, and hope that if they’re making enough money off of you, maybe they’ll put some of those profits towards quality control.

As a result, businesses have quickly latched onto the fact that no matter how expensive you make baby items, parents (and grandparents) will grit their teeth and pony up for it, because they’re scared to buy the cheaper alternative. And the prices have been rising ever since.

Under all of these circumstances, my mind boggles that there were still 7.8 million babies born in China last year. My mind boggles that at least 15 million adults still got together and went, “Nah, I still want kids though.”

And that’s why I’m willing to bet money that if the CCP could go back to their attitude in the 90s, where they actively encouraged people to sue shady companies churning out unsafe products, and maybe give out some amount of subsidies to new parents or towards purchasing baby items, they could easily, easily double the amount of newborns each year. I really do think so. And trying to cut down on the amount of unpaid overtime would help a lot too.

But they won’t. No matter how much they’re worried about population collapse, structurally speaking, Chinese society and Chinese law just isn’t structured to allow for that without a lot of accompanying changes.

And I will write about that too. Now that I’m done with this essay, I’m going to start on another one that’s been on my mind for a while—“Why is Chinese corruption so systematic?”