China is ending a decades-long tax exemption on contraceptives to push up its birth rate. Experts say the change could leave women and young people more vulnerable.
Archived version: https://archive.is/newest/https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12-04/china-add-tax-on-condoms-and-contraceptives-to-boost-birth-rate/106097254
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Economically stable people who feel safe in their society choose to have children.
China has not been sharing youth unemployment numbers for a year now, after they started approaching 20% unemployment for the 18-30 age range.
Not with climate change looming. I have all the money I need still won’t get kids.
This logically makes sense, and may have even been something that you’ve experienced yours either directly or second hand via friends/family, but it’s not present in the data.
There’s a very strong negative correlation between education and income vs birth rate. As people make more money and/or attain higher levels of education they have fewer kids. My theory is that this is due to a combination of reliance on direct family for labor on a homestead/farmstead, sex ed, and access to contraceptives. Kids are also a large time/emotional/financial commitment and with our modern emphasis on “self sufficency” this places a heavy burden on parents. Some countries have tried softening this blow, but it hasn’t changed their birthday trend.
There isn’t causation here.
What you are seeing here is that the more highly educated people exist, our birth rate goes down, BECAUSE they can see it’s a bad idea.
Forcing the births of kids who can not be provided for is not the statistical.“own” you think it is.
I totally agree that forcing people to have kids is a horrible idea.