China is facing a population crisis in part due to more women choosing to focus on their careers and personal goals, instead of starting a family. The Chinese government abolished its one-child policy in 2016, and scrapped childbirth limits in 2021 — but married couples are still having fewer children.
The social structure, religious beliefs, economic prosperity and urbanisation within each country are likely to affect birth rates as well as abortion rates, Developed countries tend to have a lower fertility rate due to lifestyle choices associated with economic affluence where mortality rates are low, birth control ...
Fertility rates are easing as incomes rise and access to contraceptives improves, on top of changing attitudes among women about having children later in life, or not at all. The United Nations now expects the number of people to peak at 10.4 billion by 2100, a decline from earlier estimates exceeding 11 billion.
Although decreasing fertility is a common phenomenon in every successfully developing country, China is a special case due to the implementation of a massive and stringent population control policy that's already lasted for decades.
In the long run, a shortage of factory workers in China — driven by a better-educated work force and a shrinking population of young people — could raise costs for consumers outside China, potentially exacerbating inflation in countries like the United States that rely heavily on imported Chinese products.
Researchers believe the lower population growth rate could mean higher labor costs in China because of a smaller pool of available workers. A shrinking labor force could make it harder for China's government to fund its public health and welfare costs, which would suppress China's economy.
It will argue that East Asia's collective levels of low fertility emerged from an amalgamation of social, cultural, and economic shifts within the region that incentivized smaller families, created rigid gendered expectations on parenting, and increased the risks and costs associated with raising a child in one's ...
Many younger Japanese have balked at marrying or having families, discouraged by bleak job prospects, corporate cultures that are incompatible with both parents — but especially women — working, and a lack of public tolerance for small children. Many couples also hesitate to have children due to rising costs.
If this declining interest in childbearing is any indication, China will struggle to stabilize its fertility rate at 0.8, and its population will fall to less than 1.02 billion by 2050 and 310 million in 2100.
This post will examine four factors that influence the total fertility rate (TFR), including a female's age when she has her first child, educational opportunities for females, access to family planning, and government acts and policies that affect childbearing.
Factors generally associated with decreased fertility include rising income, value and attitude changes, education, female labor participation, population control, age, contraception, partner reluctance to having children, very low level of gender equality, infertility, pollution, and obesity.
Ageing population, slowing productivity
The unique demographic and economic conditions China leveraged to achieve unprecedented growth in recent decades have faded away. The vast labour pools that fuelled China's low-cost industrial base are shrinking as its population ages rapidly.
The national fertility rate, which measures the average number of children a woman can be expected to have during her reproductive lifetime, hit rock bottom in 2020 amid the disruption and uncertainty of the COVID-19 crisis.
In conclusion, among women aged 20–49 years in Henan Province, China, the prevalence of infertility in 2019 was 24.58% and 61.17% of infertile women sought medical help.
South Korea's fertility decline began in the early 1960s when the government adopted an economic planning program and a population and family planning program. By that time, South Korea was languishing, having seen its economy and society destroyed by the Korean War of 1950 to 1953.
The average Thai family has only 1.3 children while it should have two or more, but many factors are behind the sliding birth rate, such as the modern lifestyle, the choice to remain single, or couples choosing not to have children, according to health experts.
Indranee Rajah, who serves as minister in the Prime Minister's Office, told a parliamentary committee that the falling fertility rate was because of people marrying later and parents caring for older family members at the same time as children as the population grays.
South Korea has the lowest fertility rate globally at 0.9 children per woman, closely followed by Puerto Rico at 1.0 and a trio of Malta, Singapore, and the Chinese Special Administrative Region Hong Kong all at 1.1 children per woman.
South Korea has had the lowest fertility rate in the world since 2013. The fertility rate is the average number of children born to a woman in her reproductive years. The drop in fertility rates has left countries facing a future of aging populations and shrinking workforces.
What are the reasons for the fertility rates decline? Many factors like education (mean school years for females), economy (Gross Domestic Product), religious beliefs, contraceptive prevalence rate (CPR), the strength of family planning programs, etc influence the fertility rates of a country.
China's fertility rates were already decreasing in the 1970s, and by 1980 the Chinese government formally instituted the controversial one-child policy, legally restricting families from having more than one baby. The policy was intended to further limit China's population growth and help stimulate an economic boom.
Weakening Recovery
The signs so far have been disappointing: manufacturing activity is contracting, deflation is looming, export demand is falling, and recent holiday spending was subdued. Speculation has grown that the People's Bank of China will add more stimulus after a surprise interest-rate cut in June.
Total fertility rate: children per women
The 2021 rate of 1.15 is well below the replacement rate of 2.1 generally thought necessary to sustain a population, also well below the US and Australian rates of 1.7 and 1.6, and even below ageing Japan's unusually low rate of 1.3.