Society

Chinese struggle with cost of raising children

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-09-18 20:31

BEIJING - An ongoing Internet survey, launched by one of China's popular websites, www.sina.com, shows that about 83 percent of netizens think the cost of rearing childen is too high.

The survey, completed by 3,283 netizens by far, quizzes the participants on some newly-released finding by a Nanjing-based University.

When the School of Foreign Language and Literature of Nanjing Normal University started its new semester recently, all the parents who accompanied their children for university registration were asked to fill in a form on the cost of bringing up a child.

The form had several categories, including those about child's education fees, medical treatment fees and daily expenses. The form also asked parents to specify the total cost of bringing up their child over 18 years.

The results showed that most ordinary families spend about 100,000 yuan on their child before he or she reaches university age, while better-off ones can spend 300,000 yuan.

A netizen with the online name of "lieren 002" left the message saying that he expected the cost of bringing up his child to be more than what the survey shows. He has spent 80,000 yuan for his daughter's kindergarten education and will spend 132,000 yuan for her primary and middle school education, another 144,400 yuan for her insurance bills.

"I live in Beijing and expect the education cost alone for my daughter will exceed 350,000 yuan," the netizen said.

Chang Li, an English teacher in one of Beijing's key middle schools, has kept a record of the cost of rearing her two-year-old daughter in an account book.

"From the day when she could climb, I sent her to Gymboree early learning center, which helps her explore her potential through games, music and arts. From her first class till now, I have spent 12,000 yuan," said Chang, explaining her biggest expense by far for her daughter.

Today's urban Chinese mothers are willing to start investing even before they get pregnant.

Chang is no exception. She spent several hundred yuan on vitamins supplements to improve her health before getting pregnant and another 400 yuan on buying radiation protection clothing.

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Then after her daughter's first birthday, she started to feed her imported milk powder, one to two tins per month. Each tin of milk powder costs 160 yuan. Also the diapers she uses cost 100 yuan per bag and the baby goes through at most four bags per month.

A survey on the willing of China's urban and rural residents to have children, which was conducted by Horizon Research Consultancy Group in April, found that though most young urban Chinese want to have children, having a sound economic foundation and owning a house were prerequisites to having one.

And, how much monthly family income makes a couple feel financially secure to have a child? Respondents in mega-cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou thought the baseline should be 8,078 yuan, while in midsize cities like Wuhan, Harbin, Taiyuan, Xi'an and Kunming, respondents gave the amount as 5,169 yuan, according to the survey.

With more than 10,000 yuan in monthly family income, Chang needs to pay about 1,000 yuan in mortgage every month for their two-bedroom apartment and another 1,000 yuan for gasoline and car maintenance.

Chang told Xinhua that her child's education will continue to be the bulk of her expense in the future.

She will send her daughter to a nearby kindergarten this year. The admission fees for three years is expected to exceed 20,000 yuan and she still needs to spend another 1,000 yuan each month for her child's food, books and toys.

A new term -- "child's slave" -- is frequently heard in today's media in China, playing on the term "mortgage slave."

But Chang thinks that "child's slave" exaggerates the reality, saying that after all, the blood bond between mother and child could not only be measured by money.

"Nothing could compare with the happiness a mother gets from witnessing her child grow up," Chang said.

Zhang Yi, research fellow of the Institute of Population and Labor Economics, of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) thinks that the term  "child's slave" could, in some sense, reflect that Chinese are facing a variety of pressures as the country modernizes.

"To relieve individual's burden of raising a child, the most important job for government is to pour more investment into education and promote education equity," he said in a Xinhua interview.

The Chinese government released a national education plan for the next decade, saying that the country's fiscal education expenditure should be increased to be four percent of GDP in 2012 and the preschool education should be basically universal by 2020.