China's falling birth rate > What's causing it?

 

Thousands of Chinese kindergartens close as

falling birth rate takes its toll

Last year saw the number of kindergartens fall by over 5 per cent

while the number of children enrolling dropped by more than 11 per cent

Luna Sunin Beijing, South China Morning Post

Published: 3:20pm, 27 Oct 2024Updated: 5:14pm, 27 Oct 2024

The number of kindergartens in China dropped by more than 5 per cent last year in the latest indicator of the country’s falling birthrate.

In 2023 the number of kindergartens fell by 14,808 to 274,400 – the second consecutive annual decline – according to an annual report by the Ministry of Education.

Meanwhile, the number of children enrolled in kindergarten declined for a third consecutive year – dropping by 11.55 per cent, or 5.35 million, last year to 40.9 million, according to the report.

The number of primary schools also dropped by 5,645 to 143,500 in 2023, a 3.8 per cent fall.

The decline reflects a broader demographic shift in China – where both birth rates and total population continue to dwindle – posing a serious threat to future economic growth, which is already slowing.

Last year, China’s population dropped for the second year in a row, to 1.4 billion, a decline of over 2 million. Only 9 million births were reported in China in 2023, the lowest figure since records started in 1949.

The China Population and Development Research Centre has calculated that the country’s fertility rate dropped to 1.09 in 2022, and demographers estimated that it fell below 1.0 last year, although there is no official figure available.

The fertility rate refers to the average number of children born to each woman, while a replacement fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman is widely accepted as the necessary rate for a country’s population to remain constant.

In Shanghai, one of China’s wealthiest cities, the total fertility rate dipped to 0.6 in 2023, according to the local authorities.

“Meanwhile, the burden of elder care is intensifying, all amid economic stagnation,” said He Yafu, an independent demographer based in Guangdong province.

“Kindergarten operators need to adjust strategically to meet new challenges, such as expanding early childhood education to include children under three and establishing an integrated care-education system.”

National Health Commission data from 2021 showed that more than 30 per cent of Chinese families with infants and toddlers in China need child care, but only 5.5 per cent have enrolled their children in nurseries or pre-kindergartens.

An increasing number of kindergartens have been converted into care centres for senior citizens, and many of their staff members have switched jobs to care for the elderly.

Chinese families are increasingly reluctant to give birth, deterred by hefty housing and child-rearing costs, cut-throat competition for good schools and universities and jobs as well as the uncertain economic and political outlet.

A recent survey of women of childbearing age in the eastern city of Ningbo found that nearly half of single, childless women expressed a preference for having only one child, over a third did not want any children, 15 per cent wanted two, and less than 1 per cent said they wanted more children.

It also found that 56 per cent of those questioned regarded marriage as optional rather than essential and nearly 6 per cent saw no need to get married at all.

Canadian Convulsions > Canada in Free-fall on all the Indexes of a Good Life

 

How Far Is Canada Sliding Down the Quality-of-Life Indexes?

The Epoch Times

By Adam Brown

5/21/2024

Updated:

5/22/2024

As Canada slides down the quality-of-life indexes and many once-poor countries climb up them, Canadians may find themselves having to readjust their image of their country.

Canada, once the global icon for quality of living, is now on par in some respects with Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Croatia, and other former communist countries of Eastern Europe. Meanwhile, it’s lagging behind countries such as Kuwait in terms of happiness, Thailand in terms of safety, and Slovenia in terms of health care. The good news remains, though, that the country still has a lot of potential.

The shift has been a long time in the making. While a Fraser Institute study released May 16 found that standards of living have been dropping steadily in Canada since 2019, the United Nations Human Development Index (HDI) suggests the decline has been going on for decades.

Any Canadian who read the newspapers in the 1990s will remember the yearly reports about the HDI, which describes itself as a “measure of average achievement in key dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, being knowledgeable and having a decent standard of living.”

The country topped the list for much of the 1990s—the undisputed best place in the world. Many older Canadians have not updated their image of their country since.

Although Canadians are still richer, healthier, and happier than most people in the world, the country never again attained the 1990s heights in the HDI. In fact, it didn’t even attain those heights in the 1990s—after a change in the methodology, the HDI was rewritten to show, retroactively, that Canada only placed a maximum of second in the 1990s.

Canada had fallen to seventh place by the year 2000, then to 12th by 2010, 15th by 2020, and to 18th in 2022, the latest year for which rankings are available. It’s now no longer so far ahead of Slovenia, Estonia, and the Czech Republic, as the end of communism in the late 1980s and help from the European Union pushed much of Eastern Europe up the indexes.

Many of the other indexes that appeared over the decades confirm the trend.

Numbeo, a crowd-sourced global database of quality-of-life information, for example, shows Canada declining to 33rd spot this year from seventh place when its records began in 2012. It now ranks below the most prosperous Eastern European countries such as Estonia, Latvia, Croatia, and Lithuania, and far behind the United States, which placed 15th.

In those 12 years of Numbeo records, Canada dropped to 30th spot in health care in 2024 from 21st in 2012, and to 34th from 7th in having the lowest property-price-to-income ratio. It is also behind Eastern Europe’s Czech Republic in terms of health care and behind Romania, Hungary, Serbia, and other nations of the region in terms of safety.

Canadians can also find little to smile about in the World Happiness Index, which measures factors such as social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity, and corruption. When the index was created in 2012, Canada placed a cheery fifth. The 2024 report, though, which shows country rankings for 2021–23, rates Canada 15th, making it sadder, or at least less happy, than nations such as Kuwait and Costa Rica.

Then there’s the Global Social Progress Index, which measures inclusion, political rights, safety, education, and other metrics. With all the shouting, placard-waving, and statue-toppling for social justice, surely Canada must be doing well there.

Nope. Overall, Canada has fallen from 10th place in 2011, when the index was first compiled, to 15th currently. This is despite Canada ranking fourth in the “acceptance of gays and lesbians” category—an area the federal government has made a main focus—and ranking second in the category of the proportion of women with advanced education.

How about the city-focused Global Liveability Index run by the Economist Intelligence Unit, a measure often cited by expatriates? In the latest edition, published last year, Canada still has three cities in the world’s top 10, with Vancouver fifth, Calgary seventh, and Toronto ninth. Ah, but in the 2015 report, Vancouver ranked third, Calgary tied for fifth, and Toronto ranked fourth.

Maybe Canadians really can take heart, though, from the actual state of the country. Canada holds vast potential as one of the most resource-rich nations in the world, and has the most educated workforce in the G7. It may have fallen over the past three decades, but it still ranks relatively high in general in various global indexes.

Whether Canada can make the same claim in another three decades remains to be seen.

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