A low-fertility trap in China’s largest city
中国最大都市-上海陷入低生育率危机
Mar 15th 2013, 12:41 by J.P
THIS week The Economist looks at the backlash against the one-child policy in China. The article points out that the bureaucracy created to run the policy, the family-planning commission, has lost its separate identity and will be merged with the health ministry into a new Health and Family Planning Commission. Normally in China (as elsewhere) power and bureaucracy go together, so this loss of bureaucratic autonomy probably signals a loss of influence, and may presage scrapping the policy itself (though officials say that won’t happen).
《经济学家》了解下本周有关中国独生子女政策的反对呼声。这篇文章指出中国政府撤销曾经成立的计划生育委员会（负责实施计划生育政策），将其与国家卫生部的职责整合组建国家卫生和计划生育委员会。在中国（其他国家也一样），权利和国家政府一般是联系在一起的，因此这次官僚自主性（注释1）的缺失也许意味着政府影响力的下降，或许预示这项计划生育政策终会取消（虽然官方对此予以否认）。
But even if it does, how much difference would ending the one-child policy make? Our report focuses on Shanghai and, by chance, China’s biggest city has a great deal of evidence that bears on that question. Most of it suggests the answer is not much.
但就算是取消这项政策，又会有多大的影响呢？ 我们本次报道主要聚焦上海，碰巧这座中国最大的城市（上海）拥有关于这一问题的大量事实，且大部分证明：影响并不大。
Under the current policy, adults who were only children themselves are permitted to have two children. According to research by Stuart Basten of Oxford University*, that provision applies to 70% of the city’s couples. In other words, the weight of the one-child policy bears down relatively lightly on Shanghai. Even so, Shanghainese couples have extremely low fertility. The city’s total fertility rate—the number of children a woman can expect to have during her lifetime—was a mere 0.64 in 2002-03 (one of the lowest rates ever recorded in peacetime) before rising slightly to a still-low 0.89 in 2007. The Shanghainese are not having larger families even though they are allowed to.
当前的计划生育政策允许都是独生子女的成人生第二胎，牛津大学的斯图尔特-巴斯顿的研究显示，上海有70%的夫妇都享有这项规定，换句话说，独生子女政策对上海造成的压力相对比较少。即便是这样，沪籍夫妇的生育率相当的低。该城市的总生育率 — 每个妇女一生孕育的孩子—2002至2003年仅为0.64人（创和平时期以来的最低点），2007年生育率缓慢上升，为0.89人，但仍然很低。即便这一政策使上海人能抚养更多的小孩，但是他们都不想拥有大家庭。
The reason is that the one-child policy seems to have changed social norms. After two generations of growing up alone, people now expect to have only one child. In 2003 and 2008, the city’s family-planning bureaucrats (the Shanghai Municipal Population and Family Planning Commission) asked 38,000 men and women aged 20-45 about how many children they wanted. They found the average ideal family size was just 1.07, with 81% of respondents saying they wanted only one child and just 15% saying they wanted a second. Admittedly, not all the respondents would necessarily be allowed a second child, and some people may have been extremely cautious about replying to any questions from some of the feared and hated bureaucrats in China. All the same, the figure is strikingly low. It is also worth noting that the share of those saying they wanted no children doubled between the two surveys, though only to 8%.
原因在于独生子女政策似乎改变了社会规则。自两代人都是出生在独生子女家庭，他们都希望只生一个小孩。在2003年和2008年，上海计划生育机构（上海市人口和计划生育委员会）对38000位年龄在20-45岁的男女进行了问卷调查，即他们想要几个孩子。调查发现，他们理想中的家庭平均人口为1.07人，这些人中有81%称有一个孩子就够了，只有15%的人想要两个孩子。当然，他们并不是都能准许生第二胎，有些人可能在回答中国一些疑心重重及让人反感的官方机构提出的问题时表现得相当谨慎。不管怎么说，这数字出奇地低。值得注意的一点是，在这两次调查中发现，丁克族的比例翻了一倍（尽管只占8%）。
This does not mean the one-child policy has had no effect (though a few demographers do argue that). Nor does it mean the policy is alone responsible for changing social norms. The cost of educating children and the difficulty of finding accommodation big enough for a family with two children are also factors. But the one-child policy does seems to have forced desired family size down further and faster than would have happened without it. And now that expectations of a small family have taken root, they may well stay low, even if the policy that gave rise to them is scrapped.
这并不是说独生子女政策没有什么作用（尽管一些人口学家都认为影响力不大）。也不是意味着这项政策只是为了改变社会规则。子女受教育的费用以及很难找到供一家四口居住的房子也是其中的原因。但是独生子女政策似乎迫使家庭理想规模变小，并且这一变化速度快于没有政策的情况。因为现在“小型家庭”观念已深入人心，所以即便引发这一观念的政策被取消，这些观念还有可能保持低下。
注释1：官僚自主性：是指官僚机构或个人超越其法定的地位和职能，超越政治家的控制，在公共决策过程中发挥主导作用的现象。官僚自主性现象由来以久，可以说它是伴随着政府的产生而产生，但在现代民主制建立之前，它合理而自在地存在着，而作为一个“问题”被提出在西方则是近一百多年的事，因其对政治与行政二分原则的背离而受到关注的，近几十年已发展成为所有现代政府面临的普遍而又难以克服的问题，并成为政治学研究的重点之一。政治学研究官僚自主性问题的主要动因在于揭示官僚制与民主政治之间的悖论问题，即官僚制因民主政治发展的需要而建立，但其发展本身实际上又损害着民主政治发展的基本原则。