China is ending a decades-long tax exemption on contraceptives to push up its birth rate. Experts say the change could leave women and young people more vulnerable.
Archived version: https://archive.is/newest/https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12-04/china-add-tax-on-condoms-and-contraceptives-to-boost-birth-rate/106097254
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Economically stable people who feel safe in their society choose to have children.
China has not been sharing youth unemployment numbers for a year now, after they started approaching 20% unemployment for the 18-30 age range.
Not with climate change looming. I have all the money I need still won’t get kids.
Economically stable people who feel safe in their society choose to have children
This logically makes sense, and may have even been something that you’ve experienced yours either directly or second hand via friends/family, but it’s not present in the data.
There’s a very strong negative correlation between education and income vs birth rate. As people make more money and/or attain higher levels of education they have fewer kids. My theory is that this is due to a combination of reliance on direct family for labor on a homestead/farmstead, sex ed, and access to contraceptives. Kids are also a large time/emotional/financial commitment and with our modern emphasis on “self sufficency” this places a heavy burden on parents. Some countries have tried softening this blow, but it hasn’t changed their birthday trend.
There’s a very strong negative correlation between education and income vs birth rate
There isn’t causation here.
What you are seeing here is that the more highly educated people exist, our birth rate goes down, BECAUSE they can see it’s a bad idea.
Forcing the births of kids who can not be provided for is not the statistical.“own” you think it is.
I totally agree that forcing people to have kids is a horrible idea.
The US birth rate and china’s birth rate are shockingly similar. I love how we point to their one child policy for their issues while ignoring what both populations are saying. Turns out run away capitalism is too blame. The one child policy doesn’t explain why both populations millennials and gen xers are not interested in even having relationships, let alone having children. Both sets say the same things. Not enough money, too much work, worries about climate, and fear of world conflicts. Both China and US people need to realize both our governments are more likely to role back women’s rights to increase birth rates opposed to emancipating their people.
36 years of government policy with harsh penalties for having more than one child doesn’t disappear quickly (1979-2015). They’ve trained two generations not to have kids, and the looming global climate disaster affects everyone worldwide. And while I haven’t looked into it, I think it’s a safe bet that in large Chinese cities the cost of living has also outpaced wages, like in nearly every other major city in the world. None of that is conducive to wanting to have kids.
Capitalisms only solution to problems is to continue the beating until morale improves, as long as it’s deemed the most profitable.
Literally no government is actually trying to improve the quality of life of its people in any tangible way that addresses the reasons they choose to not bring a child into this world.
