Never in history have the concerns surrounding aging population dominated society to such an extent as they do today. Indeed, the increasing proportion of elderly people has become a global norm, one that is anything but economic progressive. What appears to be controlled birth rates and financial pressure is, in reality, a quiet surrender to declining fertility rates and the long-term aging tendency in demographic graph. This issue, if left unaddressed, will push national development further into the grip of workforce scarity, unless involved agents, from governments to businesses and individuals, act collectively to increase fertility rates and foster labour capacity of senior citizens.
Central to the older population lies an interplay of forces, predominantly driven by controlled birth rates. The outdated limits in the number of children for each household have been the main engine for the public disengagement in birth delivery, relied upon the unsurmountable anxiety shared by people who used to live low-quality life to discourage birth giving. As a consequence of the ‘fewer-children-for-better-nurture’ mindset, many families adhere to the once-needed one-child guideline, fearing that having additional kids would place extra burdens on the public budget and risk their financial autonomy. Nowhere is the case for this more evident than in China, where young generations refuse to have more kids even though restrictions in the legal number of kids have been eliminated for nearly a decade. It is financial pressure that also contributes to people’s reluctance to birth giving. In a society where even identification cards cost money, people with low and medium incomes find it struggling to pay for additional bills for their babies. The outcome is that these people become senior citizens with no kids, their presence increases the percentage of the elderly in national demographic database.
This aging trend in demographic patterns, whose effects are cumulative and far-reaching, demands urgent multi-faceted intervention before the damage becomes irreversible. On a policy level, the government should estabish fertility-raising policies, with more government-funded financial support and social welfares for the pregnant and under-18-year-olds. This mitigates finance-induced disengagement in fertility and helps overcome the ‘fewer-children-for-better-nuture’ stereotype. At a more local level, businesses should increase the number of off days for women with recent delivery and allow male workers to work from home to take care of their pregnant wifes. However, there is no such thing as a quick fix without a transformed mindet. Only when people’s awareness of the importance of high fertility rates in maintaining workforce quantity will their willingness to have more children be fostered, instead of being forced by any other legal action like what China did in the past. In the short term, senior citizens should be encourged to participate in educational and apprenticeship courses to continually work and earn money to ease the burdens on the public welfare system.
Taken together, the aging population is a complex consequence of the past’s birth-giving-restrictive policies and the contemporary financial pressure. It stands to reason that solving this problem requires a collective effort made by governments, businesses, and individuals, because saying ‘we should have more babies’ is one thing, and building an environment where pregnant women and babies’ living standards are secured is another.