cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/44989415
China has made condoms and other contraceptives more expensive as it tries to boost birth rates … Consumers must now pay a 13 percent value-added tax for contraception including condoms, after Beijing removed exemptions on the products from January 1.
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The government has sought to boost China’s flagging birth rate, concerned about the rapidly ageing and shrinking population, as well as record low marriage rates.
But young people in Beijing told AFP that taxing contraceptives will not address the root issues they say are stopping people from having children.
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“The immense pressure on young people in China today — from employment to daily life — has absolutely nothing to do with condoms,” a resident in her thirties, who wanted to be known only as Jessica, told AFP.
Jessica said there was a notable class divide in Chinese society and many people felt their future was too uncertain to start a family.
“The rich are too rich, and the poor remain poor… (and people) lack confidence in their future, so they may be unwilling to have children.”
Xu Wanting, 33, who read about the new tax online, said she did not believe it would directly increase birth rates.
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China’s leaders, including President Xi Jinping, have pledged to address the country’s demographic problems … But the contraceptives tax is trivial compared to the true cost of raising a child in China, one of the world’s most expensive countries for child-rearing, said Alfred Wu, associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore.
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They face concrete obstacles in China, Wu added, such as a weak job market, “prohibitive” housing costs, a stressful work culture and workplace discrimination against women.
A 19-year-old student surnamed Du told AFP in Beijing she felt the impact of more expensive contraceptives would be limited.
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“Young people today… worry about whether they can shoulder the responsibilities of being parents,” she said.
Seems like no matter what country you’re talking about the rich would rather do anything but address the underlying problem as that would mean a less extreme wealth gap.
Exactly—taxing condoms won’t pay for a house or a kid’s education. It’s just another way to avoid fixing the massive wealth gap that’s actually stopping people from starting families.
The least unequal societies all have low birth rates though. While inequality is still a serious issue in these societies, I’m not aware of any evidence or mechanism suggesting addressing this would increase birth rates.
Has it ever been tried?
A more equal society than the most equal to have ever existed (in modern times at least - some hunter-gatherer tribes are highly egalitarian)? No, I don’t think so, but the kind of issues Americans popularly hypothesize as reasons for low birth rates are just not relevant in these societies, and I don’t see lower inequality having much effect on the real reasons people have no or few children there.
My unsourced and anecdotal explanation would be that inequality is one part of it with the other major part being global instability. I have zero desire to have children and the reasons are split just about 50/50 between affordability and the expectation that my theoretical child and/or I will die in a war or climate-related disaster. This has only been more reinforced with the US being the US and already throwing its bloated, rotting and explosives-filled carcass of a state onto other countries
Be careful with that rational logic… Oh wait, this isn’t Reddit. Carry on.