China population: rural families unwilling, unable to have more children faced with ‘life of inferiority’
- In the past, a higher fertility rate in rural areas compensated for a low rate in China’s cities, but demographers say that is no longer the case
- The cost of living, including education and housing, are putting a new generation of rural migrant workers off having kids
When Liang Du was born in a remote mountain village in Jiangxi province in 1979, he was the seventh child in the family and the only boy. At the time, the more children – and especially the more sons – a rural family had, the more blessings it was thought they would receive.
Fast forward four decades, and the attitude in China about having children has changed drastically.
Liang’s nine adult nephews have all left for cities or bigger urban areas, either because of education or marriage, but because the cost of raising a child is so much higher today, all have opted for much smaller families.
Four of his nine nephews have two children, while the rest have only one.
Most young people in the countryside were left-behind by their parents, and they don’t want their children to suffer the same experience
“Today, the cost of marriage and childbirth is much higher than the average income of young people, whether in the countryside or urban areas,” said Liang, who has six older sisters who supported him at university and even helped him to buy a flat.
“If families want to have more children, they must find work out of their rural hometown and leave the children there. But most young people in the countryside were left-behind by their parents, and they don’t want their children to suffer the same experience,” added Liang, referring to left-behind children in China who remain in rural regions while their parents leave to work in urban areas.
The make-up of Liang’s extended family also offers a glimpse into China’s shifting demographics.
For a new generation of rural migrant workers – leaving home for work as labourers, factory hands or domestic helpers in cities – the cost of living is proving much more onerous than for those in previous decades.
The results confirmed demographers’ warnings about an ageing population and shrinking workforce, a problem that could weigh on productivity, the pension system and threaten the government‘s consumption-led growth model in the future.
While the population grew last year, the number of births fell for the fourth consecutive year – from 18 million in 2016 to 12 million.
Even before the policy revision, rural families were already allowed to have two children if the first was a girl, while ethnic minorities were allowed an extra offspring, leading some to dub it a “one-and-a-half child” policy. Urban couples were also allowed to have a second child if the parents were both single children.
In June and July, several provincial governments conducted studies on marriage and childbirth among young rural residents aged between 18 and 35.
In the northern city of Qingdao, authorities found some 58.43 per cent of young married or divorced people in the countryside had one child, 29.78 per cent had two children, 11.8 per cent had no children and only 1 per cent had three children or more.
In rural areas in the southeastern Ningbo province, only 0.89 per cent of young people had three or more children, while 62.5 per cent had one child.
In the city of Yancheng in Jiangsu province, 11.8 per cent of young people with a rural household registration said they wanted three children. That figure was 10.2 per cent in Jinhua city in Zhejiang province, and 11.2 per cent in Jinan in Shandong province. It is generally accepted that the intention to have children is usually much lower than the actual fertility rate.
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Births among young people in rural areas have been dropping rapidly, even more so than their urban counterparts, according to Huang Wenzheng, a demographer who has written extensively on China’s birth rate.
In the past, a higher fertility rate in rural areas could compensate for the very low rate in cities, but not any more, he said.
As the country has developed, many of China’s rural youth have spent time living in cities where they faced the same pressures as their urban counterparts. Now, they are taking on a similar outlook towards raising a family, Huang said.
“Even in the rural areas of China where the willingness to bear children is relatively high, the willingness to give birth is lower than Japan and South Korea,” he said.
Education is also becoming more expensive, especially as schools in the countryside close due to dwindling populations.
That has forced rural parents to send their children to learn in cities, bumping up the cost of schooling and raising another obstacle to having children.
Complicating the scenario is China’s hukou system, even though Beijing in recent years has been reducing the link between hukou status and access to services.
Nearly 64 per cent of Chinese lived in towns and cities last year, according to official data, but only 45.4 per cent have an urban hukou. That means scores of Chinese living in cities do not have access to the complete range of public services, including education for their children, and on paper, that could affect any one of China‘s 249 million migrant workers.
I think the decline in the newborn population is an irreversible fact not just in urban cities but also in rural counties, because the cost of marriage and childbearing is very high for local young people
“I think the decline in the newborn population is an irreversible fact not just in urban cities but also in rural counties, because the cost of marriage and childbearing is very high for local young people,” said Mandy Zhou, who runs a private kindergarten in a rural mountain county in Jiangxi province.
“Public kindergartens generally charge 6,000 yuan (US$939) a year here, private kindergartens cost about 10,000 yuan a year, and local property prices are about 6,000 yuan per square metre. But local young people generally earn about 2,000 or 3,000 yuan monthly.
“The wedding dowry in our county costs between 160,000 and 200,000 yuan, with a flat as a must. Few young people, especially women, are willing to live in villages or towns with their children.”
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For this generation, the cost of marriage and childbirth was based on rural living standards, which were relatively low.
Nowadays, the young generation of migrant workers stay in urban areas, which are more expensive.
“I think in our village, 60 per cent of parents in their 30s have two children, the rest have one child, and those with three are rare,” said Tan Biao, a migrant worker and mother of two children from the rural county of Renhua in Guangdong province.
“My husband and I work in Dongguan and left our children, aged six and 13, living with grandparents in the village.
“It costs us about 35,000 yuan a year to raise them … I feel guilty that I can’t live with them. But if we bring them here, we would have to send them to private schools and rent a bigger flat that would double or even triple our cost of living.”
For local officials, population growth is far less important than policies such as [coronavirus] pandemic prevention and carbon emissions in their [key Performance Indicator] reviews
A big problem, according to Huang, is China’s policy incentives to boost its fertility rate are lagging behind the urgent and actual need and are not sufficient.
“For local officials, population growth is far less important than policies such as [coronavirus] pandemic prevention and carbon emissions in their [key Performance Indicator] reviews,” the demographer added.
Looking ahead, China’s rural population will continue to decline, with the ageing problem set to be felt far more severely too, he said.
“Most young couples in their 20s will choose not to have a child if the choice is to do so in the countryside, with only rural household registration. It will be just another life of inferiority,” added Tan.
