Graying Shanghai encourages couples to have 2 kids

[Coventina]

Source: Associated Press

SHANGHAI — Family planning officials in Shanghai are making home visits and slipping leaflets under doorways to encourage certain residents to have a second child in a bid to balance the city's expanding senior population.

A statement about the new campaign posted Thursday on the Web site of the Shanghai Population and Family Planning Commission was quick to emphasize that it didn't signal any change in China's one-child rule and was only an attempt to let people know about the policy's many exceptions.

About 3 million, or 21 percent, of Shanghai's nearly 13.7 million registered residents are now aged 60 or older, the statement said.

Xie Lingli, the commission's director, was quoted as saying authorities will go door to door to try to encourage couples to have a second child if both grew up as only children.

The commission also plans to offer emotional and financial counseling for interested couples, the statement said.

Divorced parents in Shanghai may also have a second child with a new spouse, it said.

The campaign is aimed at reducing the ratio of elderly people and preventing future labor shortages, it said.

A spokeswoman for the commission who would only give her surname, Zong, said officials in charge of the campaign were not immediately available for comment.




Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gDwpKj8es0xMmNPiLVE6TOo_93bQD99K4BH00

[imdjh]

1. Insanity. nt

[AnneD]

2. With all those boys folks have been trying for and aborting for...

this may present a problem.:evilgrin:

[The2ndWheel]

3. A few ways we could go with this

Encourage more pregnancy domestically, adding to the population.

Encourage immigration, making the developing world little more than a baby factory for the developed world that needs people to sustain their social and economic systems.

Erase all borders, bring every human into a single social and economic global system, and pay everybody not to have children.

I'm sure there would be more options. Either way, everything we do requires more people to reduce the burden for each person.

[Posteritatis]

10. Though 2 per family on average wouldn't add to the population

You need about 2.3 or 2.5 to keep the population stable (the leftover taking into account people not having kids, infant mortality, accidents, etc).

If you had an idealized 2.0 per family, you'd see a gradual decline in population, which isn't so bad. One would cause a more than gradual decline, of course.

[The Stranger]

4. Too many people on the planet.

Destroying the ecosystems everywhere.

[WriteDown]

5. Same problem as Japan....

Wonder how long the Japanese will be around for.

[RaleighNCDUer]

6. Quite a while, I expect. There are 128,000,000 of them. nt

[WriteDown]

7. Yes, but towns are literally disappearing...

The consequence of having a "pure" society with a low birth rate.

[RaleighNCDUer]

8. I see this as a good thing.

Would that EVERY country could reduce its population to sustainable levels.

[WriteDown]

9. I'm a Native American...

my people will suffer the same fate and I do not see it as a good thing.

[RaleighNCDUer]

12. Are your people heavily overpopulated and outstripping their

capability to sustain themselves?

There are close to seven billion people on this globe, and there should be 2 billion, max. IMO, even that is too many, taking the population back to that of 1900. Were your people around when the world population was 2 billion?

Neither the Japanese nor you are going to 'disappear' due to underpopulation. We all, however, could disappear due to overpopulation. When ANY species overpopulates its environment, the population crashes.

[WriteDown]

14. When are you going to remove yourself from this world?

Sounds like you're part of the problem. :evilgrin:

I've got to also wonder if you have kids or plan to have them.

[RaleighNCDUer]

15. I've contributed my 'two replacements' population - and neither

by my own choice. My ex went off the pill without telling me.

I will have no more.

And I will remove myself from this world as soon as I get the first diagnosis of Alzheimers - I'm not sticking around to lose myself the way my dad did.

We are ALL part of the problem.

[WriteDown]

16. No excuse

Why didn't you get a vasectomy before you had the first child or at least the second? Sounds very convenient. :)

[RaleighNCDUer]

17. I should have.

It would have save me a fortune in child support.

[Regret My New Name]

19. lol... that's cold...

poor kids... :P

[The2ndWheel]

11. Countries require people

If they start reducing their populations, they won't be countries for very long.

[RaleighNCDUer]

13. Nonsense.

Was the US any less of a country in 1900 when there were only 80 million of us? Did Japan exist with a population of 20 million?

You think continued population growth is without limits?

[The2ndWheel]

18. No, I don't

But countries need people. That's why we're in such a mess all the time.

[RaleighNCDUer]

20. You think we're in a mess because we have too few people?

I'm sorry, I don't follow.

[The2ndWheel]

23. I think we're in this particular mess

because everything we do requires more people doing more. If we didn't have more people doing more though, we wouldn't have all that we have. I'm not saying a world of fewer people doing less isn't possible, but it would be different, in both good and bad ways.

1) More people doing more
2) More people doing less
3) Fewer people doing more
4) Fewer people doing less

Those are our 4 options, the way I see it. The 2nd and 3rd options really aren't options though, since if you have more people, you're going to eventually have more activity, and if you fewer people, you're going to eventually have less activity.

For a while now, I'm thinking at least centuries, we've had more people doing more things, which has allowed more people to continue to do more things. We've bumped into regional limits every now and then, but then expanded in order to continue doing more things. Now we have a global civilization, and there isn't anywhere else to expand to. Unless we're colonizing space, and for the sake of argument, I'll leave that over on the side for now(although it's certainly tied into the topic). It's not about expansion today, it's about efficiency. However, we only want to increase efficiency so that more people are able to do more, as that is the only fair thing to do. We're not trying to increase the efficiency of solar panels so that we can use less solar energy. We can use less of it by not even investing in the panels.

The more developed countries are also the older ones. This is an issue that we haven't had to deal with in our history. We're at the beginning stages these days, but it hasn't hit the US, Japan, or Western Europe head on yet. Do we just continue importing the best and the brightest from the developing world? What does that do to the developing world? Do we just import as many people as possible? What does that do? There are any number of questions. We know the stage after developing, that would be developed. What comes after the developed stage? Is it the end of history, and the perfect state of existence, and nothing will change? Or is it old age, followed by death? That's not something many, if any, societies have had to deal with in the past. Usually it's been conquering other societies, or being conquered by other societies, with an occasional environmental problem that was basically regional.

[NickB79]

26. We're in this mess because we went with the "infinite growth" economic model

When we live in a world with finite resources.

If we reduce our population, there will be fewer workers and consumers to keep fueling a consumer economy that must expand or die.

If we don't reduce our population, we will outstrip the planet of resources and die off.

[Art_from_Ark]

21. There aren't that many towns in Japan that are "literally disappearing"

The ones that are "disappearing" are usually old mining towns whose minerals have been depleted, isolated towns in mountainous areas, or small towns in economically depressed areas. The reason why those populations are declining is not due so much to the low birth rate, but rather to out-migration resulting from isolation, lack of opportunities, lack of land, and/or unfavorable climate or geological conditions.
At 4X the population of California in the same area, there are already enough people in Japan.

[WriteDown]

22. Here...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4065647.stm

[Art_from_Ark]

25. I understand about that

I've lived in Japan for more than 2 decades. The Japanese government is trying to get women to have more children. But in today's Japan, that's a tall order, given how expensive it is to raise just one child to adulthood (which is 20 years in Japan). But even if the population increases, they won't be moving back into deserted mining areas or declining industrial towns, or moving into isolated mountain villages. And kids who grow up in those areas will more than likely end up looking for ways to move out, which has been the case for the past 50 years.

[surrealAmerican]

24. Towns disappear in the US too.

That's what happens when people move to the cities and suburbs for jobs.