China's ruling Communist Party announced Thursday that the country will start allowing all married couples to have two children, abolishing an unpopular policy that has limited many urban families to only one child for more than three decades.
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And the collective response from Chinese citizens, besides complete suspicious, has so far apparently been "children are too expensive, we don't want two". Kinda fits with the whole "more technology leads to more expense for children which leads to downward population pressure" idea.
ReplyDeleteInteresting thing is, the projections of China's population change shows this having very little impact in the long run it seems, with a population peak around the year 2030/2035, and then a declining population from then on for the foreseeable future; having China join the growing list of modern nations in negative growth. Seems just de-restricting their child policies won't save their economy from the population slowdown (and eventually decrease) that's already affecting them. Makes one wonder how long until the entire world hits its peak from modernization and start declining, and then to what level?
Guess that depends on if the "third world" ever gets truly modernized, or if they get stuck as a constant underclass.
There was an earlier attempt to allow families made of parents who were both single children to allow them to have more than one child. The families were largely disinterested in doing so. I have a feeling that's the reason China made this move.
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