On August 27, the drafts sections of the Civil Code were submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress for deliberation. It is understood that the relevant content of family planning is no longer retained. If the third meeting of the 13th National People's Congress in March 2020 successfully passes the draft, it means that family planning will be fully liberalized, and a family planning era that lasts for more than 40 years will come to an end.
Adjusting or ending the family planning policy is related to China's population and aging. In other words, China needs to raise the fertility rate to a sustainable level and provide sufficient human resources for its future development. However, the full liberalization of family planning is only a starting point. Judging from the effect of fully liberalizing the two-child policy, the increase in fertility rate is not satisfactory. After the two-child policy was liberalized in 2015, the birth population in 2016 climbed to the highest level since 2000, but in 2017, it dropped 630,000 to 17.23 million. The birth rate and natural growth rate of the year dropped. Some people have commented that the two-child policy is more like a one-time population bonus.
If the goal of raising the fertility rate fails to be achieved, then the adjustment of the birth policy will not work. The development history of developed countries and regions such as some countries in Europe and Japan show that even if there is no birth restriction, the economic development and urbanization rate will inhibit the fertility rate. If it is not immigration, the population of these traditional developed countries will see more severe aging and labor shortage problems. Therefore, abandoning the family planning policy will not necessarily increase the fertility rate. To improve the fertility rate, China should focus on the social and economic foundation and prepare various systematic measures.
The first is the cost of childbirth and raising the children. Urbanization has an inhibitory effect on fertility, and an important reason is that fertility and parenting costs are too high. In China, rapid urbanization has also increased the cost of urban life, especially in first- and second-tier cities. High housing prices have raised not only the city's commercial costs but also suppressed the consumption aspirations and fertility of the ordinary middle class. In many important areas such as housing, education, medical care, social security, and transportation, the cost would not be low; coupled with the artificial barriers created by urban household registration, young couples need to have the courage and financial resources if they want to have more children.
The second is the attitude regarding the childbearing age of women; this is one of the important reasons to determine the fertility rate. Currently, the age group of being "mother" in China is those born in the 1980s or even 1990s. Young mothers have a higher education level and stronger self-awareness, and their roles are no longer limited to the family, compared to the older generation. The new generation has more needs for career pursuit and self-improvement; the difference between social roles and values of life makes young urban women more reluctant to have children. There are also a large number of women who are unwilling to marry and less willing to give birth, which has reduced the fertility rate of Chinese women.
The third is the cost of employment. The cost of employment opportunities resulted from having children is too high, which also influences the fertility rate. In China, although women's education level and overall quality are getting higher and higher (men are gradually falling behind in both aspects), women still face greater difficulties in employment. After two-child policy, complaints about gender discrimination in employment in the enterprise are increasing. However, objectively speaking, the continuous birth of two children per household does significantly reduce the competitiveness of women in employment, and the loss of promotion opportunities due to marriage and childbearing are the costs that women have to bear if they have children.
Terminating the one-child family planning policy does not solve these problems immediately. The more important factors are outside of the childbearing policy; therefore, to improve fertility, the direction of relevant policies should be to be about reducing the cost of childbirth and parenting as much as possible. In this regard, China can learn from the experience of some developed countries.
Japan is the most typical super-aging and low-fertility country in the world. However, unlike the widespread birth rate crisis in the media, Japan's total fertility rate has been slowly recovering since 2006. According to the World Bank, Japan's fertility rate has fallen since the "1.57 crisis" (1.57%) in 1989 and fell to less than 1.3 (1.3%) in 2005. It has been slowly picking up since then, reaching around 1.45% in 2015.
In order to increase the fertility rate in Japan, the Japanese government has tried many measures. The history of Japan for nearly past 30 years is a history of encouraging births and several policies were introduced; for example, there are plans of creating an environment suitable for giving birth at a later age, so long as the children are born and included in the fertility rate statistics. Another example is the Plus One Proposal, which attempts to encourage Japanese families to have one more child. In addition, there are "Angel Plan" and "New Angel Plan", the two programs that are intended to encourage having children. Under such programs, all expenses of children from infancy to 5 years old are borne by the government. The Japanese government will even give subsidies for mothers who have just given birth and the mothers who raise the children at home to help the unemployed mothers who lost their income.
In addition, Japan's policy of encouraging fertility is also evident in the gradual transition from child rearing and adolescent growth to creating a more "child birth-friendly" working environment. The Japanese government's policy of encouraging births has also been extended to men, including by 2020, the proportion of men's maternity leave will be increased to 80%; the proportion of women's longest maternity leave (one year) increased to 13% (there was only 2% in 2013); the proportion of women who can retain their original jobs after their first birth has increased to 55%. In 2010, this proportion was only 38%.
China's abandonment of family planning policy is the right direction, but improving fertility is by no means just a matter of relaxing the family planning policy; there is the need to plan and design the policies from multiple aspects.
