{"id":95032,"date":"2023-05-22T23:39:06","date_gmt":"2023-05-22T23:39:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/2023\/05\/22\/asia-is-spending-big-to-battle-low-birth-rates-will-it-work\/"},"modified":"2023-05-22T23:39:06","modified_gmt":"2023-05-22T23:39:06","slug":"asia-is-spending-big-to-battle-low-birth-rates-will-it-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/2023\/05\/22\/asia-is-spending-big-to-battle-low-birth-rates-will-it-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Asia is spending big to battle low birth rates – will it work?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Declining birth rates are a major problem for some of Asia’s largest economies.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Governments in the region are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to reverse the trend. Will it work?<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Japan began introducing policies to encourage couples to have more children in the 1990s. South Korea began using the same practice in the 2000s, while Singapore’s first fertility policy dates back to 1987.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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China, whose population has declined for the first time in 60 years, recently joined the growing club.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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While it’s difficult to quantify exactly how much these measures have cost, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol recently said his country has spent more than $200 billion (\u00a3160 billion) on the attempt over the past 16 years to stimulate the population.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But last year, South Korea broke its own record for the world’s lowest birth rate, with the average number of children expected per woman dropping to 0.78.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In neighboring Japan, which saw a record low in births last year with less than 800,000 births, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has pledged a 10 trillion yen ($74.7 billion; \u00a359.2 billion) budget for child-related measures double, which equates to just over 2% of the country’s gross domestic product.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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While there are more countries around the world trying to lower fertility rates, the number of countries trying to increase fertility has more than tripled since 1976, according to the latest United Nations report.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Why do these governments want to increase their population?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Simply put, a larger population that can work and produce more goods and services leads to higher economic growth. And while a larger population can mean higher costs for the state, it can also mean higher tax revenues.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In addition, many Asian countries are aging rapidly. Japan tops the list with a proportion now over 65, and several other nations in the region are not far behind.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Compare that to India, which has just overtaken China as the world’s most populous nation. More than a quarter of the people are between 10 and 20 years old, giving the economy enormous potential for growth.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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And as the proportion of the working-age population shrinks, the cost and burden of caring for the inactive population increases.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Negative population growth has an impact on the economy, and together with an aging population, they will no longer be able to afford to support the elderly,” said Xiujian Peng of Victoria University.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Most policies to increase birth rates across the region were similar: payments for new parents, subsidized or free education, additional kindergartens, tax incentives, and extended parental leave.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But do these measures work?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Data from Japan, South Korea and Singapore over the last few decades show that attempts to increase their populations have had very little impact. The Japanese Ministry of Finance has published a study saying the measures have failed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This view is also shared by the United Nations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“We know from history that the kind of policies that we call demographic engineering, which try to get women to have more children, just don’t work,” Alanna Armitage of the United Nations Population Fund told the United Nations BBC.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“We need to understand the underlying reasons why women don’t have children, and that is often women’s inability to reconcile their professional lives with their family lives,” she added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But in the Scandinavian countries, Ms. Peng says fertility policies have worked better than in Asia.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThe main reason is that they have a good welfare system and the cost of raising children is cheaper. Also, gender equality is much more balanced than in Asian countries.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In the World Economic Forum’s global report on the gender gap, Asian countries rank lower in comparison.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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There are also big questions about how these expensive policies will be funded, particularly in Japan, the world’s most indebted developed country. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Options being considered in Japan include selling more government bonds, which means increasing debt, raising sales taxes, or raising social security contributions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The first option places an additional financial burden on future generations, while the other two would hit already-struggling workers, which could persuade them to have fewer children.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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However, Antonio Fat\u00e1s, economics professor at INSEAD, says that whether these measures work, they need to be invested in. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cFertility rates haven’t gone up, but what if there was less support? Maybe they would be even lower,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Governments are also investing in other areas to prepare their economies for shrinking populations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“China has invested in technology and innovation to offset the decline in the workforce and mitigate the negative impact of a shrinking population,” Ms. Peng said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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While it remains unpopular in countries like Japan and South Korea, lawmakers are discussing changing their immigration rules to attract younger overseas workers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“The world’s birth rate is declining, so it will be a race to attract young people to work in your country,” Ms. Peng added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Regardless of whether the money for fertility policies is well spent, these governments appear to have no choice.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Declining birth rates are a major problem for some of Asia’s largest economies. Governments in the region are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to reverse the trend. Will it work? Japan began introducing policies to encourage couples to have more children in the 1990s. South Korea began using the same practice in the 2000s, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business"],"yoast_head":"\nAsia is spending big to battle low birth rates - will it work? - Tahrir News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/2023\/05\/22\/asia-is-spending-big-to-battle-low-birth-rates-will-it-work\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Asia is spending big to battle low birth rates - will it work?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Declining birth rates are a major problem for some of Asia’s largest economies. 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