Now, Chinese people can have a second kid if one of the parents is a single child. Wait, isn’t this a really big deal? Not only will this have significant implications to personal freedom and gender equality, but consumer spending and economic output due to demographics will be significantly impacted. China stocks are up like 3% now… well, the USD ETFs at least, since it’s night time in China. Finally, these things are doing something to my personal portfolio. Really regret buying that crap this year…
They finally figured out that there won’t be enough young people to take care of them?
havent they had exceptions such as this for a while? If first child is a boy, you get to have another kid etc.
There were several exceptions. For instance, the policy did not apply to rural people, certain minorities, or parents who are both single children. However, today, China announced a further relaxation of the policy, along with other significant reforms. This change has further economic significance, given that urban Chinese have an incredibly high savings rate at around 50%. Thus, there is significant repressed consumer potential in China. Allowing people to have more kids is one way that China can increase consumer spending.
The implications of this in the short, medium, and long term are fascinating, because they all have different dynamics.
There was an article on BBG about the lack of marriage age women in China a few days ago (coinciding with AliBaba’s record breaking sales on Singles Day) and the economic impact of future generations because of it. pretty good read.
the 1 child rule was not as iron clad aboslute as most think. it was primarily in effect within Cities. countryside / rural areas never had the restriction. and even in the cities, families could pay money to allow for a second child.
I agree with the consumer spending argument.
China is trying to convert their economy from manufacturing to consumer spending and services. The natural evolution of economics.
Some sort of safety net can go a long way in reducing that savings rate.
This new policy is a bit late for the 24 million men that will go through life without banging a single girl in their lifetime.
of course a big reason for this problem is that women / men ratio is something like 5:1
which means a lot of men will be forced to get wives elsewhere.
The only ratio I look at is the HCB/men ratio.
^ yea that might be close to 0