The Future Belongs To Those That Show Up: China Edition

 I watched a video recently that went over various financial trends that could be used to determine a rising or declining dominant economic and political power. The model accurately showed the rise and decline of France which was replaced by Britain which was replaced by the U.S. which will be replaced by China (according to current trends). The catch in all this is that France, Britain and the U.S. also had growing populations as they each succeeded the former. China is a different matter. Japan is a warning in this case as in the early 1980s economic trends indicated that it was on a track to equal or exceed the United States economically; and then it suddenly wasn't. 

    A recent article I came across concerning China's demographic problem is entitled "China's birth rate has fallen so much that many hospitals are simply giving up on delivering babies." The article, from the Business Insider, relates:

    People in China are having fewer babies — so much so that many hospitals in the country have stopped delivery services altogether, as the state-owned Chinese newspaper The Paper reported Monday.

    The trend appears to have started last year when some hospitals in China shut their obstetrics departments, with The Paper also reporting on the phenomenon in September.

    It's unclear exactly how many hospitals have shut their obstetrics departments or halted newborn-delivery services in the past year, but the closures are continuing into 2024.

The article also mentions:

    The number of maternity hospitals in China dropped from 807 in 2020 to 793 in 2021, according to the most recent available official data.

    The closures came as China's population — the world's second-largest — fell for a second straight year in 2023, a development that's set to have profound implications for the world's second-biggest economy.

Although the Chinese government has been offering incentives to get couples to have children, it isn't working: the birth rate fell from 6.77 per 1,000 in 2022 to 6.39 in 2023. And this is according to government statistics which often try to present a rosy picture. 

    I came across a link to a recent essay by James Pethokoukis of the Faster, Please! substack that discusses the coming demographic collapse (noting that by 2100 only 6 countries will be having children at replacement level or higher). He suggests that a way out of this trap--i.e., a method of encouraging people to have more children--can result from greater work productivity through technology combined with a societal shift away from a focus on working--that is, paying people enough money that they don't need to work as many hours or days coupled with a shift into accepting that they don't need to work as many hours. He believes that people in such circumstances (or at least enough people) will take that extra leisure time and invest it into families, including additional children. The basis for his thinking this is because in developed countries, extremely wealthy people and deeply religious people tend to have larger families than typical.

    I think Pethokoukis is wrong that this would lead to larger families. As an initial maatter, the reason for the deeply religious to have larger families is a matter of faith: faith in the future and belief that it is their obligation to have children and fill the earth. I suspect that billionaires are also happier and have greater faith in how their future will turn out that also would lead them to produce more children. 

    On the other hand, many European countries have cultures that eschew long work weeks and provide substantial time off, yet that increased leisure time has not translated to larger family sizes--quite the contrary, in fact. Europeans are less religious than other peoples,which also contributes to the small family sizes that are now the norm.

    Moreover, it is the belief that there is more to life than raising children that drive women away from having children. Just as religiosity is an accurate predictor of family size, so too is the education of women an accurate predictor of family size, but in the opposite direction. It isn't that educated women know more about birth control (although that probably is a factor) but that they have, and desire, different options than motherhood. Thus, as one young woman in the Business Insider article commented:

Two Chinese women told Business Insider's Kevin Tan last month that they were resistant to having kids because of the cost and commitment involved.

Pethokoukis' plan (or hope) might deal with the cost issue, but not the commitment issue.