Yesterday, the childcare subsidy came out after much anticipation, officially announced. The core content is that children under 3 years old are entitled to childcare subsidies, with 3600 yuan per child per year. It’s about ten thousand yuan in three years. If there are three children, that’s more than thirty thousand yuan.
Many people think 300 yuan per month is too little. I think, having a subsidy is better than not having one. Giving you money for having more children is better than fining you for it. Those born in the 80s and 90s, don’t forget what you learned in school, and the eight characters printed on almost every town, every village, and every street’s public wall: “Fewer births, better births, a happy life.”
In fact, it was only nine years ago that the two-child policy was relaxed, in 2016. The three-child policy was relaxed only four years ago, in 2021. Does it feel like a lifetime ago? Not really. Friends who grew up in the countryside should remember the memories of having children and breaking up families.
In other words, it only took four years from allowing people to have three children to issuing childcare subsidies, which is very fast.
There’s nothing we can do about it. The birth rate is declining too fast. If I could use a more intense word to describe it without causing problems for the article, I could think of 100 more intense words, but to be safe, I won’t use them. I’ll just use “too fast” to describe it.
The statistical data for 2023 shows that our total fertility rate is 1.01. What’s the concept? The internationally recognized fertility rate level for normal population replacement is 2.1, less than half of this value. It ranks last among all global economies, only higher than South Korea. And it’s slightly higher, as South Korea’s is 0.7.
Therefore, a total fertility rate of 1.01 is extremely low. The foreseeable consequence is that aging will come like a tidal wave, and each of us is in it.
Some people think that as long as they have money, it’s a joke. You think you can hire someone to take care of you when you’re old. When it comes to severe aging, unless you’re really rich to the TOP level, the people you hire are just old people with gray hair who are only slightly younger than you.
Only very rich, very, very rich people may have the ability to hire young people to take care of themselves.
As for ordinary people, those who rely on paying social security every month and relying on retirement pensions to support themselves when they get old, if they have enough money, they will take care of themselves; if they don’t have enough money, they will go out and take care of the elderly who are richer than them to earn some money to take care of themselves.
An old man taking care of another old man, this may be a more common story in a severely aging society, no joke.
However, the total fertility rate of 1.01 is not the key; the key is the speed, the speed, the speed. The speed is dropping too fast. If we calculate based on the trend of the birth rate decline, we are definitely number one in the world, without any doubt, a rare phenomenon.
You can see from the data that we dropped from a total fertility rate of 1.8 in 2017 to 1.3 (2020) in just 4 years, and the fertility rate in 2023 is 1.0, which means it only took 7 years to go from 1.8 to 1.0.
Everyone laughs at South Korea, but it took South Korea 22 years to go from 1.8 to 1.0, and Singapore took 27 years. We took 7 years. Compare and you won’t be able to laugh.
And South Korea is worried about whether it will become the first country on this planet to naturally disappear because people don’t have children.
So Japan and South Korea are frantically stimulating childbirth, with various subsidies. For example, South Korea increased the subsidy standards last year. I asked AI to check the money South Korea gives to children, see the picture below, not including other support such as education, medical care, and housing. You can feel it, they have used many methods, of course, they may not be useful.
In my opinion, this wave of childcare subsidies is very necessary, and frankly, it’s too late. It should have been launched earlier, and the intensity should be even greater. The reason is simple: our decline is too rapid. They took almost a generation to complete it in 20 years, and we finished it in 7 years.
Everyone can look forward to it. More complete and systematic childcare support is on the way. In addition to the childcare subsidies launched, there was also news these days that preschool education will be free.
In the future, there will be measures such as pregnancy and childbirth, housing for multi-child families, and pregnancy wage subsidies. These measures have been tried by countries like Japan and South Korea, and we will follow suit.
Finally, when I saw this news, I was scrolling through Douyin and saw comments in the comment section, and someone was shouting gratitude again. I really wanted to roll my eyes. Although it’s a good thing to give you money, you also need to understand that this is normal, very, very normal.
Because the total fertility rate has fallen to 1.0, in any normal country, they will give subsidies to children.
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