What happened to the fertility rate in China?

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naturalplastic
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17 Apr 2022, 6:55 pm

ironpony wrote:
I am guessing the reason why a lot more people don't want to have a kid in a China is because why give birth a child if you have to raise it in such a political hellhole? I mean if you are only allowed to have one, and their is a history of 50% chance the government will kill your other child, etc?


I hope you are aware that the Skinned Wolf, the original poster, lives in the heart of China.

The One Child policy was abandoned years ago.

The whole topic of this thread is about how DESPITE THE FACT THAT THAT POLICY WAS LIFTED years ago China's birth rate continues to decline because other social trends are now coming into play (modernization, urbanization, and some other unknown factors).

The original poster, Wolf, like most folks in China, does not think of his country as a "political hell hole" anymore than the average Canadian, like you, go around thinking of Canada as a "political hellhole".



1986
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17 Apr 2022, 7:52 pm

SkinnedWolf wrote:
I know him and he's rarely involved in PPR.
And he seems to have immigrated to Japan from northern Europe.

Yes, I'm not Japanese but Swedish. My wife is Japanese though. If you have any questions I can ask her about it.

I guess we're kind of illustrative of the situation since we just have one child and are not planning on having any more. I'm not sure how much Japan matches China in this case, but as was previously mentioned fertility rates are dropping all over the developed world and the way it is being propped up in most countries now is through immigration, which is simply not happening here. About 2% of Japan's population are immigrants. I think it's close to 20% in Sweden these days.

One interesting fact is that if we remove all the singles from the equation and look only at the married couples, on average there are 2 children per couple, same as most European countries. The low birth rate in Japan is thus at least partly caused by many men and women failing to find a partner to marry, or simply shunning dating altogether because they enjoy their single life too much and/or are too focused on their careers.

For a woman, having children is often a death sentence to your career in Tokyo, and if the man wants to participate in child-rearing and not just become a "walking ATM", he too has to sacrifice much of his career prospects. The dissemination of average-income families consisting of two full time working parents supported by a strong societal safety net will probably not become a reality in Japan until I'm an old gramps.



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18 Apr 2022, 12:30 am

1986 wrote:
Yes, I'm not Japanese but Swedish. My wife is Japanese though. If you have any questions I can ask her about it.

I assume your wife is about the same age as you.
Has she witnessed the radicalization and decline of feminism in Japan, and the eventual rollback of women's rights?
I've heard some rumours about this. And this is happening in China.

Does Japan currently have any laws that systematically or disguisely punish singles. For example, increase taxes for single people or reduce taxes for married people.

How are the working hours and commuting time in Tokyo?

Do these young people who choose to be single also choose not to buy a house?
If so, do they tend to rent or live with their parents?

What is the current situation of the elderly without children and the elderly with children in Japan when they are retired?

Does Japan have a sound childcare institution?

Does Japan have paternity leave?


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18 Apr 2022, 12:36 am

naturalplastic wrote:
ironpony wrote:
I am guessing the reason why a lot more people don't want to have a kid in a China is because why give birth a child if you have to raise it in such a political hellhole? I mean if you are only allowed to have one, and their is a history of 50% chance the government will kill your other child, etc?


I hope you are aware that the Skinned Wolf, the original poster, lives in the heart of China.

The One Child policy was abandoned years ago.

The whole topic of this thread is about how DESPITE THE FACT THAT THAT POLICY WAS LIFTED years ago China's birth rate continues to decline because other social trends are now coming into play (modernization, urbanization, and some other unknown factors).

The original poster, Wolf, like most folks in China, does not think of his country as a "political hell hole" anymore than the average Canadian, like you, go around thinking of Canada as a "political hellhole".


Oh I see my mistake. I would have thought maybe a lot of people did not like China, if that was the history there, wtih the abortions and only having one kid and all. My mistake.

Why do more modern people not want to have children compared to people of the past?



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18 Apr 2022, 1:04 am

naturalplastic wrote:
The original poster, Wolf, like most folks in China, does not think of his country as a "political hell hole" anymore

Ahem, we don't think China is a "political hell hole" in most cases - the direct manifestations of politics are sometimes annoying, but rarely a real difficulty in life(This may already be slightly different due to recent events in Shanghai) - but many young people think China is an "economic hell hole" .
Since we have a big government, economic problems are also political in nature.


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naturalplastic
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18 Apr 2022, 1:20 am

SkinnedWolf wrote:
naturalplastic wrote:
The original poster, Wolf, like most folks in China, does not think of his country as a "political hell hole" anymore

Ahem, we don't think China is a "political hell hole" in most cases -.


Thats what I said. Thats what I was explaining to him.



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18 Apr 2022, 2:25 am

SkinnedWolf wrote:
1986 wrote:
Yes, I'm not Japanese but Swedish. My wife is Japanese though. If you have any questions I can ask her about it.

I assume your wife is about the same age as you.
Has she witnessed the radicalization and decline of feminism in Japan, and the eventual rollback of women's rights?
I've heard some rumours about this. And this is happening in China.

Does Japan currently have any laws that systematically or disguisely punish singles. For example, increase taxes for single people or reduce taxes for married people.

How are the working hours and commuting time in Tokyo?

Do these young people who choose to be single also choose not to buy a house?
If so, do they tend to rent or live with their parents?

What is the current situation of the elderly without children and the elderly with children in Japan when they are retired?

Does Japan have a sound childcare institution?

Does Japan have paternity leave?

I will ask some of your questions tonight and the remaining ones tomorrow. I understand you'd like to get answers directly from "the source" so I will make time for it.

As for paternity leave, here's a recent article that sums up the current situation well:
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20220417/p2g/00m/0bu/026000c



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18 Apr 2022, 2:30 am

1986 wrote:
I will ask some of your questions tonight and the remaining ones tomorrow. I understand you'd like to get answers directly from "the source" so I will make time for it.

Thank you so much for your assistance


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1986
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18 Apr 2022, 7:44 am

It turned out to be quite a deep conversation so I'll have to return to it at a later point, but regarding your first question, from my wife's personal point of view (she's 38), things started to improve, especially in the labor market, around 20 years ago.

Before then there was a lot of sexism and discrimination against women in the job market, e.g. "women can't do this kind of work" or "women should only do x", and so on. But bit by bit new laws were passed and the discrimination abated. Some pioneering women reached posts in society which were previously "men only" (business exec, political party leader, fighter pilot, etc.).

Things are most likely going to continue in a direction that favors more women in the workplace. After all, the Japanese are well aware of what's going on in the rest of the world and when they look at other countries (China, Sweden, etc.) it's a bit embarrassing that they lag behind so much in terms of gender equality.

Now if we go back one generation to when her mother was young, there was definitely more pressure on women to quit working once they got married, and even if they continued working they'd only be handled simpler tasks that the men were unwilling to do. Discrimination was a natural part of life as a woman. Going even further back to her grandmother's generation, women didn't have much to say even at home. The man was the head of the household and whatever he decided was final. We can only be glad that those times are over.



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18 Apr 2022, 9:01 am

1986 wrote:
We can only be glad that those times are over.

I've heard of these events, although it seems that the exact time when they end is a little off from what I expected.
But I have heard other rumors (from the other side of the debate on certain issues) that:
There was a time when women in Japan generally made men pay for dating, and even maintained relationships with multiple men to get more men to pay for her.
The more radical feminism that grew out of this phenomenon eventually destroyed it. Because it caused a general dislike among men against women and "supporting women". This makes more unmarried women fall into "women's poverty" instead.
(Considering that Japan still did not give full and equal employment rights to men and women at that time)
I don't know how much of the above is true.

I often see Japan's experience as China's future experience. It's great to see good progress in Japan in this regard, which may mean that some of China's problems will be resolved in the near future as well.


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18 Apr 2022, 2:51 pm

1986 wrote:
It turned out to be quite a deep conversation so I'll have to return to it at a later point, but regarding your first question, from my wife's personal point of view (she's 38), things started to improve, especially in the labor market, around 20 years ago.

Before then there was a lot of sexism and discrimination against women in the job market, e.g. "women can't do this kind of work" or "women should only do x", and so on. But bit by bit new laws were passed and the discrimination abated. Some pioneering women reached posts in society which were previously "men only" (business exec, political party leader, fighter pilot, etc.).

Things are most likely going to continue in a direction that favors more women in the workplace. After all, the Japanese are well aware of what's going on in the rest of the world and when they look at other countries (China, Sweden, etc.) it's a bit embarrassing that they lag behind so much in terms of gender equality.

Now if we go back one generation to when her mother was young, there was definitely more pressure on women to quit working once they got married, and even if they continued working they'd only be handled simpler tasks that the men were unwilling to do. Discrimination was a natural part of life as a woman. Going even further back to her grandmother's generation, women didn't have much to say even at home. The man was the head of the household and whatever he decided was final. We can only be glad that those times are over.


Is it mostly men who pressure women into quit working, or are there a lot of women who for this as well?



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18 Apr 2022, 3:02 pm

ironpony wrote:
Is it mostly men who pressure women into quit working, or are there a lot of women who for this as well?

Offensive to say. Japan is China's cultural satellite country.
Judging from China's experience, this is the participation of both parties.

Education and culture discourage girls from competing. Therefore, most women tend to avoid workplace competition, which even objectively reduces the average work efficiency of female employees relative to male employees.
The lack of paternity leave for men and a culture in which women do the main household work is another reason why women are objectively less productive than men on average.
And Japan didn't go through the communist era, so they have more systems that hinder women's participation in labor.
Since women have been excluded from the workplace, when "the workplace excludes women", it does often appear that men exclude women. Even if there are female executives in the company, she will tend to recruit/promote men for the benefit of the company.
This also leads to the lack of sufficient benefits for women and their parents to enhance their work ability and education level., and there is enough retreat (marriage). This in turn makes women more shy of competition.

This is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
When society and yourself believe that you are weak, then you inevitably become weak.


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18 Apr 2022, 7:05 pm

Oh I see. But why do men not want the women to work at all in Eastern society more so? Doesn't this put so much more pressure on the men to deliver, and they are just putting so much pressure on themselves, therefore, rather than having it be a nice thing if another person can help and take some of the load off, so to speak?



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19 Apr 2022, 1:15 am

ironpony wrote:
Oh I see. But why do men not want the women to work at all in Eastern society more so? Doesn't this put so much more pressure on the men to deliver, and they are just putting so much pressure on themselves, therefore, rather than having it be a nice thing if another person can help and take some of the load off, so to speak?

This seems to be different in modern Japan and China. Communism has a strong corrective effect on this cultural idea, although this progress is fading.

The more common attitudes of Chinese men are:
I don't agree that women's ability to work is comparable to men's.
I want my wife to have a good career, but I don't expect too much from it.

On the other hand, young people in China (and presumably Japan) face low employment rates. There are not many good jobs, and promotion is difficult.
Compared with the illusory "wife's career", a young male usually prefers to be guaranteed in employment first. Given Japan's high singleness rate, and the direction that China is heading in, these men lack the common benefit of women.

In ancient times in East Asia, "working outside" basically meant farming, which was almost exclusively dependent on men. Women are responsible for fertility, housework and textiles at home. Textile products are the only means for many farmers to obtain clothing, and it can also obtain some economic income.
Another problem is Confucianism. This culture, which began to emphasize chastity in the Song Dynasty, made society wary of women going out.
This cultural inertia permeates everywhere.


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19 Apr 2022, 2:58 am

SkinnedWolf wrote:
ironpony wrote:
Oh I see. But why do men not want the women to work at all in Eastern society more so? Doesn't this put so much more pressure on the men to deliver, and they are just putting so much pressure on themselves, therefore, rather than having it be a nice thing if another person can help and take some of the load off, so to speak?

This seems to be different in modern Japan and China. Communism has a strong corrective effect on this cultural idea, although this progress is fading.

The more common attitudes of Chinese men are:
I don't agree that women's ability to work is comparable to men's.
I want my wife to have a good career, but I don't expect too much from it.

On the other hand, young people in China (and presumably Japan) face low employment rates. There are not many good jobs, and promotion is difficult.
Compared with the illusory "wife's career", a young male usually prefers to be guaranteed in employment first. Given Japan's high singleness rate, and the direction that China is heading in, these men lack the common benefit of women.

In ancient times in East Asia, "working outside" basically meant farming, which was almost exclusively dependent on men. Women are responsible for fertility, housework and textiles at home. Textile products are the only means for many farmers to obtain clothing, and it can also obtain some economic income.
Another problem is Confucianism. This culture, which began to emphasize chastity in the Song Dynasty, made society wary of women going out.
This cultural inertia permeates everywhere.


Oh I see. Why does Japan have a high singleness rate?



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19 Apr 2022, 3:48 am

ironpony wrote:
Oh I see. Why does Japan have a high singleness rate?

In my opinion, the economy is the main problem.
Japan is in their class solidification and recession. It is difficult for young people to get a salary that meets a high quality of life through work, so they suppress their desires, reject consumerism and love. This is the so-called "low desire society".

1986 may be supplemented from other perspectives.

I'm missing a point. Ancient China actually had a culture of "appreciating" female weakness and childishness. This is also present in the Chinese cultural subconscious now. This is an important reason why women are hindered by society/themselves from participating in work.
I've heard that modern Japan is more severe than China at this point.


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