At present, China has entered a moderately aging society. On the one hand, the number of elderly people is increasing. As of the first half of this year, the number of elderly people over 60 in my country has reached 267 million. It is estimated that by 2025, the number of elderly people in China will exceed 300 million. On the other hand, the number of young people is getting smaller and smaller, with only 175 million born in the 1990s and 145 million born in the 2000s. Since my country has relaxed its second child, the number of newborns born in 2017 was 17.56 million, and by 2021, the number of newborns born in 2021 was only 10.63 million.
So, what social problems will my country bring after entering a society of aging population? First, every year, more and more old employees will retire and receive pensions, which will put huge pressure on pension payments. By then, the pensions paid by young people who are working will not be enough to support such a large number of elderly people.
Second, the elderly population is increasing, and the young population is getting smaller and smaller, which will affect the consumption needs of domestic residents. Usually, the elderly live a simple life and have limited consumption demand. However, young people have strong consumption demand, so they are the main force of domestic consumption. If the elderly population increases and the number of young people decreases, the consumption demand of our residents will be greatly reduced and the circular economy will not be achieved.
Third, a large number of old employees retire every year, and a large number of jobs will be left. If the number of young people participating in the work cannot fill these positions, it will bring about labor resource shortage. By then, domestic labor costs will rise and my country's demographic dividend advantages will disappear. In the long run, the sharp reduction in the number of labor force every year will have an adverse impact on the sustainable development of our country's economy.
In order to alleviate the aging problem of my country's population, my country has successively relaxed the policies of second and third children, but the results are not ideal. The majority of young people's willingness to give birth is still low, mainly because they are under heavy pressure from the two mountains of high housing prices and high education costs. On the one hand, due to the high housing prices, many young people cannot get married or have children. In addition, even if you spend all your savings in your family and owe the bank a mortgage for decades, since you have to repay the mortgage every month, the remaining disposable income is only enough to maintain daily expenses, so you don’t have the financial strength to have a second or third child.
On the other hand, the cost of education has always remained high. Now, as soon as the child is born, parents must start cultivating it. When they first enter kindergarten, they must sign up for various extracurricular tutoring classes. When their children are in primary and secondary school, parents sign up for various extracurricular tutoring classes, or ask tutors to provide one-on-one tutoring, for fear that their children will not be able to keep up with the school teaching process. When I was in college, the tuition fee was tens of thousands per year.
Obviously, high housing prices and high education costs are important reasons why young people in China are unwilling to have children. Therefore, our country is working hard to move these two mountains to relieve stress for young families. At that time, my country's birth rate may be "turned around". There are mainly three measures:
First of all, my country has implemented the "double reduction policy". While the school reduces the academic burden of students, it is also closing extracurricular tutoring institutions to allow students to complete their academic process in class. This not only reduces students' learning pressure, but also reduces the need for parents to invest money in off-campus tutoring institutions. The reduction in education costs may promote the recovery of my country's birth rate.
Furthermore, suppress the school district housing and gradually return the price of school district housing to a reasonable range. Our country now stipulates that schools no longer recruit students nearby, but randomly recruit students after disrupting them. In addition, the teacher rotation system is to allow teachers to change schools frequently to attend classes, so that the school’s educational resources are more balanced, and students in ordinary schools will receive a good education like students from famous schools in the future. In the future, the advantages of school district housing will completely disappear, and the prices of school district housing will gradually fall back to the normal range.
Finally, our country has been emphasizing the concept of "housing for living, not for speculation" in the past few years. In 2021 alone, 651 real estate regulation policies were introduced across the country. Now the trend of domestic housing prices has reversed, and more and more cities will enter the channel of falling housing prices, which has given young people the hope of reducing the cost of buying a house. In addition, my country is also vigorously developing affordable housing . All regions are accelerating the promotion of low-rent housing and shared-ownership housing . At that time, more middle- and low-income families will enjoy low-rent housing and shared-ownership housing, and the living cost will be greatly reduced.
From the relevant policies that have been introduced in my country, the high housing prices and high education costs that affect the population birth rate of in my country will be greatly improved. I believe that with the gradual implementation of these policies, my country's population birth rate will also rebound, but this requires a certain amount of recovery time, let's wait and see.
