cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/44989415
China has made condoms and other contraceptives more expensive as it tries to boost birth rates … Consumers must now pay a 13 percent value-added tax for contraception including condoms, after Beijing removed exemptions on the products from January 1.
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The government has sought to boost China’s flagging birth rate, concerned about the rapidly ageing and shrinking population, as well as record low marriage rates.
But young people in Beijing told AFP that taxing contraceptives will not address the root issues they say are stopping people from having children.
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“The immense pressure on young people in China today — from employment to daily life — has absolutely nothing to do with condoms,” a resident in her thirties, who wanted to be known only as Jessica, told AFP.
Jessica said there was a notable class divide in Chinese society and many people felt their future was too uncertain to start a family.
“The rich are too rich, and the poor remain poor… (and people) lack confidence in their future, so they may be unwilling to have children.”
Xu Wanting, 33, who read about the new tax online, said she did not believe it would directly increase birth rates.
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China’s leaders, including President Xi Jinping, have pledged to address the country’s demographic problems … But the contraceptives tax is trivial compared to the true cost of raising a child in China, one of the world’s most expensive countries for child-rearing, said Alfred Wu, associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore.
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They face concrete obstacles in China, Wu added, such as a weak job market, “prohibitive” housing costs, a stressful work culture and workplace discrimination against women.
A 19-year-old student surnamed Du told AFP in Beijing she felt the impact of more expensive contraceptives would be limited.
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“Young people today… worry about whether they can shoulder the responsibilities of being parents,” she said.
That’s horrible. Do they really think that will cause people to have kids? And if there is an increase in unplanned pregnancies as a result, do they really think that’s the best environment for the child and parents?
It strikes me that they are just grabbing for whatever lever they can to try and “fix” their demographic problem, without understanding the underlying factors, and ultimately it will be women who get caught in the crossfire.
The only way to make people want to have children is to reduce as many bariers that would prevent them from living a life of comfort. If people have money, time, and a positive environment, they’ll have more kids.
I wonder if that’s evidence based, it would make sense and more than that, be the ideal approach to having more kids - but I suspect population booms are often seen during times of war or stress, and it has me wondering about the observable social patterns there …
Yeah, I actually don’t know. I should have worded that better.
I’m purely basing it off of what I’ve observed/ heard from all the people around me. (As well as my own personal reason).
I suppose on the flip side, there are people in extremely poor countries that have tons of kids so that they can take care of each other. So I don’t know really.
This is the same as what they trying to do in the US with draconian abortion laws. You can’t convince a person to bring a child into a life of suffering and want. You have to do the hard work of making the environment one that children can thrive in.
Lacking that, you don’t get to have a birthrate over 1:1.
Simple as.
This is not “the same” as abortion restrictions. At most they’re only similar in that they’re on completely different ends of the same spectrum of incentives. The one-child policy basically burned the idea of the large families out of Chinese culture to the point where its effects persist even though it’s gone. While I agree that this change to contraceptive taxation won’t really do anything on its own (and I personally disagree with this kind of action), its part of a broader effort to encourage larger families to avoid demographic collapse including many positive incentives.
