看外刊，学知识——BIRTH RATE咋这么低？（14）
今天本up精神状态尚可，毕竟17：30下班了嘿嘿......
今天的这篇文章条理很清晰，适合分析某个问题。大家可以码住~~~
话不多说，上文章，因为链接被xx了：
Why our low birth rates are stuck
The scars left by China’s population-control policies are clear. Last year, its population started to fall for the first time since 1962; its working-age population has been declining for a decade. A shrinking workforce acts as a drag on growth, and a swelling number of elderly puts pressure on the welfare system.
Family-planning regulations are widely blamed for depressing birth rates. But a less explored idea is that falling birth rates can ripple through the population causing the decline to be self-reinforcing. There has been little hard evidence to back this up, but a new paper appears to offer some proof. Pauline Rossi of Ecole Polytechnique in Paris and Yun Xiao of the University of Gothenburg show in the Journal of the European Economic Association that birth-control policies have “spillover effects”, meaning that if some couples reduce their number of children, it may lead others to follow suit.
Professors Rossi and Xiao examine fertility data for women born between 1926 and 1945. This cohort was of reproductive age when the “later, longer and fewer” (LLF) campaign of the 1970s, the first of family-planning policies, began. It encouraged couples to marry later, wait longer between children and have fewer of them. Much of the fertility decline happened during this period. In 1969, the total fertility rate (the average number of children a woman is expected to have over her lifetime at current birth rates) was 6.2, according to the World Bank; a decade later, it had already fallen to 2.7.
Crucially, the LLF campaign targeted only the main ethnic group, the Han. That allowed the authors to study how ethnic-minority groups, who were exempt from it, responded. After controlling for other factors, they found that the policy did not affect minorities who lived apart from the Han. For those who lived among the Han, however, it led to a decline in fertility—what the authors suggest is evidence of spillovers. The greater the share of Han in the prefecture, the stronger the effect.
Spillover effects may work in two ways. First, couples who have fewer children have more resources to invest per child. Other couples may feel compelled to emulate them if they want to compete, especially in areas such as education. A second way is through social conformity. As some couples have fewer children, this may influence others to limit the number of children they have, too. The authors found that minorities culturally closer to the Han were affected more by the LLF.
C not the only place affected by spillovers. They have been found in South Korea, too, another country with a low fertility rate and punitively expensive education. Many children there attend private tuition classes, known as hagwon, late into the evening. Seongeun Kim of Sejong University and others found that when wealthy families spent less on private classes, it led lower-income families to do the same. Spillovers may happen where people have strong economic or social incentives to keep up with others.
The implications are grim. The government has belatedly tried to prod couples into having more children, with little success. Even though the one-child policy ended in 2016, birth rates have not rebounded. The fertility rate fell to 1.2 in 2021, a record low. The high cost of having children means couples want fewer of them. Low birth rates are in turn reinforced by spillovers, leading more couples to follow suit.
What can be done? Theoretically, if spillovers work in reverse, getting one segment of the population to have more children could have an impact. To this end, the authorities could also incentivise couples through payments or benefits for extra kids. But experience suggests that such policies yield meagre results. It was much easier to use force to restrict the number of births than it is to increase it.
语言上学到的：
逻辑结构：这篇很赞！！！
短语：follow suit；social conformity等
我不管 我觉得这篇写的超好！！！
生活中学到的：
s不s，看自己，看自己想要过什么样的生活。没必要标榜自己不s，开心就好。
是非功过，后人评吧~
希望就业危机能缓解一点，这才是燃眉之急。
明天就周五啦，祝大家开开心心！！！
