‘Make having a baby a gainful job’: expert in China proposes ‘salary’ to motivate couples to have children amid birth rate crisis
- China’s population declined in 2022 for the first time in 6 decades, with 9.56 million births, much lower than the 16.4 million recorded in 2012
- India overtook China last month as the world’s most populous nation, with an estimated population of 1.42 billion to China’s 1.41 billion
A demographic expert in China has called on the government to pay couples with children “parent salaries” as an incentive to counter the country’s low birth rate.
The proposal came as the authorities in China are struggling to deal with a population slump amid an ageing population and many young Chinese people’s reluctance to have children.
India overtook China last month as the world’s most populous nation, with an estimated population of 1.42 billion, while China’s population was 1.41 billion last year.
Last year, China saw its population decline for the first time in six decades, with 9.56 million babies born, much lower than 16.4 million in 2012, the state statistics authority said.
Demographer Huang Wenzheng, a senior fellow of the Beijing-based think tank Center for China & Globalization (CCG), said the low birth rate is rooted in the lack of policies and incentives to encourage people to have children.
“We should regard having children and raising them as a job,” Huang told Jimu News. “People who do normal jobs in material production or service industries have salaries. But regarding giving birth to a child and bringing them up, people only make contributions without any financial benefits. When people find there isn’t much benefit in having children, they will have little interest in doing so.”
Huang said although human reproduction is significant for social and economic development, society generally does not recognise the economic value of raising a child.
“For any society, it’s more meaningful for a person to have babies than to do a job which AI can replace. So that person should get paid for having a child,” added Huang, but he did not elaborate on who should pay this salary or how long a couple should receive it.
Feng Yuan, a co-founder of women’s rights and equality organisation, Equality Beijing, said the parent salary proposal would not solve the “motherhood penalty”, referring to the negative impacts on women in the workplace and other areas after having a child.
“We should also address other problems. We should let men and women share family responsibilities, provide affordable kindergartens, build a social atmosphere that treats women equally, and make fair and qualified education and low-cost housing accessible,” Feng told the Post.
The parent salary proposal soon trended on mainland social media after being reported by domestic news outlets.
“This idea is fine. I hope it could be correctly implemented,” one person commented on Weibo.
“It’s a good idea. Taking care of a child is more tiring than going to work. What’s more, there is no day off for taking care of a child,” echoed another person.
“I fear that not long after young people have their babies due to this salary incentive, the authorities will change their mind and halt the salaries. What will the couples do then? They can’t return ‘the goods’,” another person said.
02:50
Baby product producers in China forced to diversify as birth rate plunges
Local authorities across mainland China have announced a flurry of policies to encourage couples to have more children in recent years.
In Beijing, women who have a second child will receive a 10,000-yuan (US$1,500) “birth allowance”. Couples will also receive an “education subsidy” of 1,000 yuan annually from the child’s birth to the year they complete their nine-year compulsory education.
For couples with a third child, the city authorities will pay them 180,000 yuan (US$26,000) in instalments over several years.
On May 15, the Guangdong provincial government in southern China called on firms in the province to create “mother’s positions” for women with children under 12 years old, with flexible working hours.
