On August 31, 2022, parents pick up their children from a primary school in Minhang district of Shanghai. The ZHU WEIHUI People in Shanghai are reluctant to have more than one child, because the cost of raising children, house prices and the cost of education are their top three concerns, according to a survey released by the Shanghai Health Commission and the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences at a seminar on Sunday.
The gathering was to promote fertility protection ahead of World Contraception Day on Monday.
Out of the 19,314 women aged between 20 and 49 in Shanghai, only 13 percent of those with their households in Shanghai have given birth to a second or third child, according to the survey.
The survey shows that those who have a larger house are more willing to have more children. The lowest willingness to have children was those with an annual family income of less than 100,000 yuan $14,000.
According to Zhou Haiwang, researcher at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, it is important to improve policies on housing and education, and increase financial input to alleviate the burden of child rearing.
According to official data, Shanghai had a fertility rate of 0.7 in 2021, much less than the national average of 1.15.
Experts said that late marriage and increased infertility brought about by induced abortions are factors that contribute to the low fertility level in big cities.
The trend of young people delaying marriage is evident, according to Professor Cheng Linan, an honorary professor at the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, and Professor Chen Rong, an associate researcher at the Asian Population Research Center and Population Research Institute of Shanghai University.
In China, where childbirth is still the norm, late marriage leads to the postponement of the first childbirth, thus reducing the probability of having children, they said.
The abortion rate is going up. According to the data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, the national number of births was 10.62 million in 2021, while the number of abortions stood at more than 9 million in the same period. The proportion of women under the age of 25 who had had an abortion was 47.5 percent, and the proportion of women who had never had children was 49.7 percent.
Adolescents are one of the main groups with abortion. There are nearly 4 million abortions a year for unmarried adolescent women, accounting for 40 percent of the total number of abortions in China, of which 19 percent have multiple abortions, said Wang Peian, executive vice-president of the China Family Planning Association.
According to some surveys by Chinese college students, only half of the respondents had formal sex education, which is partly due to the lack of formal sex education.
As a healthcare professional, Yan Hongli said, schools and society have the responsibility and obligation to carry out popular science education on reproductive health to teenagers, and raise awareness of the importance of protecting fertility.
According to He Xiaoying, deputy chief physician of the Family Planning Department of Shanghai First Maternal and Child Health Hospital, Clinical evidence shows that multiple abortions have a greater impact on women's fertility, which is also one of the main reasons for the increase in the incidence of infertility in China.