China is one of world’s most expensive places to raise children, report finds

Hong Kong CNN —

China is one of the most expensive places in the world to raise a child in relative terms, a new report says, with the disproportionate impact on women driving the country’s precipitously low fertility rate as it grapples with a demographic crisis.

The study, released Wednesday by the China-based YuWa Population Research Institute, found the average nationwide cost of raising a child from birth to age 17 was about $74,800 – rising to more than $94,500 to support a child through a bachelor’s degree.

The cost of raising a child to age 18 in China is 6.3 times higher than the country’s GDP per capita, the report said – a ratio second only to its East Asian neighbor South Korea, which has the world’s lowest fertility rate, and where the cost of child-rearing is 7.79 times GDP per capita.

For comparison, the report said that cost is just 2.08 times the GDP per capita in Australia, 2.24 times in France, 4.11 times in the United States, and 4.26 times in Japan – another East Asian country that has long struggled with a rapidly aging population and declining birth rate.

“Due to reasons such as the high cost of childbearing and the difficulty for women to balance family and work, the Chinese people’s willingness to have children is almost the lowest in the world,” the report said. “It is no exaggeration to describe the current population situation as a collapse in the birth population.”

A man and a child walk along a road with red lanterns hanging on trees for the upcoming Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations at a park in Beijing on January 11, 2023. (Photo by WANG Zhao / AFP) (Photo by WANG ZHAO/AFP via Getty Images)

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