Even after the Chinese government cleared the way for couples to have a second child, working women are reluctant to expand their family — or have any children at all, according to a new survey by Zhaopin.com, one of the nation’s biggest online recruitment Web sites.
About 40 percent of working women without children do not want to have any and about two-thirds of those with a child do not want a second, the poll found.
In big cities, such as Beijing or Shanghai, hefty living costs, long work hours and surging expenses linked to raising children have deterred more women from becoming moms.
The phenomenon is not unique to China, given the pressures that working women face around the globe.
However, it is particularly acute for the nation given its rapidly aging population.
More than three decades of a one-child policy has left the nation with too few young people to support an expanding elderly population, which is eroding competitiveness and weighing on the social welfare system.
After announcing a two-child rule in October 2015, officials estimated an increase of 4 million additional births per year through 2020, but last year births increased by just 1.31 million from a year earlier to 17.86 million. That prompted the government to consider measures such as “birth rewards and subsidies” to help encourage more people to have another child.
Yet China remains far from providing incentive packages as seen in Singapore or Germany and a porous safety network offers little help to families who cannot afford children’s education or healthcare.
Child-bearing might also lead to real financial or career losses.
The survey found that 33 percent of women had their pay cut after giving birth and 36 percent were demoted.
Among the top reasons cited for not having kids by the Zhaopin.com survey are “not enough time and energy” and “too expensive to raise children.”
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
Hungarian authorities temporarily detained seven Ukrainian citizens and seized two armored cars carrying tens of millions of euros in cash across Hungary on suspicion of money laundering, officials said on Friday. The Ukrainians were released on Friday, following their detention on Thursday, but Hungarian officials held onto the cash, prompting Ukraine to accuse Hungary’s Russia-friendly government of illegally seizing the money. “We will not tolerate this state banditism,” Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said. The seven detained Ukrainians were employees of the Ukrainian state-owned Oschadbank, who were traveling in the two armored cars that were carrying the money between Austria and
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani on Friday after dissolving the Kosovar parliament said a snap election should be held as soon as possible to avoid another prolonged political crisis in the Balkan country at a time of global turmoil. Osmani said it is important for Kosovo to wrap up the upcoming election process and form functional institutions for political stability as the war rages in the Middle East. “Precisely because the geopolitical situation is that complex, it is important to finish this electoral process which is coming up,” she said. “It is very hard now to imagine what will happen next.” Kosovo, which declared
RSS