Their efforts have ended in failure. Birth rates continue to decline. However, as Saturday marks the beginning of the Lunar New Year and the start of the Year of the Dragon, some are hoping for next year’s baby boom or even baby boulet.
According to Chinese astrology, a nearly 2,000-year-old system with casual and devout followers in Chinese communities throughout Asia and around the world, the dragon is the most auspicious animal in the zodiac.
As the only mythical creature in the Chinese zodiac, it is considered sacred and powerful. Many people believe that children born in the year of the Dragon are more likely to be successful and lucky throughout their lives.
The system assigns traits to each animal, with some years being less popular, such as tigers (too ferocious), goats (too timid), and snakes (considered manipulative and cunning). The Year of the Golden Pig, which lasts for several decades, also caused a baby boom. The golden pig is said to bring a lifetime of comfort and wealth.
But no year is more popular than the Dragon, which is associated with intelligence, self-confidence, and ambition. Couples may choose IVF, schedule a C-section, or ask their doctor to postpone the birth in time to have their child. During the Year of the Dragon, school class sizes often increase rapidly and additional classes are often needed.
Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on Friday urged people to add a “little dragon” to their families.
Superstitions are not completely unfounded. A 2019 study using data from China found that people born in the year of the Dragon score higher on university entrance exams and are more likely to receive a university education. Girls in the study cohort also tended to be taller.
However, the study concluded that the reason has nothing to do with space. It was extra time and money that parents spent on their children.
“People think these dragon children are special and want to have special children, and when they have these children, they invest in them and expect great things from them. And this We let them succeed, and the cycle continues,” said Nasi Mokan, an economics professor at Louisiana State University and one of the study authors. “That’s why this has been going on for centuries and generations.”
In China, where the Spring Festival is the most important annual holiday, authorities hope this long-held belief will produce the necessary surge in births. Hospitals across China are distributing schedules and tips instructing couples when to conceive a baby dragon.
“Please hurry up in the next few months to scientifically prepare for the birth of your baby,” a notice from Huantai Maternal and Child Medical Hospital in Shandong province said.
Zhai Zhenwu, an adviser to the National Health and Family Planning Commission, told Chinese media outlet Times Finance in January that the astrological preferences of the Chinese public are “very clear” and that the birth rate will rise this year. “It means there is hope,” he said.
The world’s second-largest economy is on the brink of a demographic crisis caused by decades of restrictions on family size. Even though China has loosened regulations (as of 2021, all couples are allowed to have three children) and provided subsidies and incentives, younger generations are reluctant to marry and have children. tend to avoid.
The number of births in 2023 decreased for the seventh consecutive year to 9.02 million, about half of 2017. If things continue as they are, China’s population of 1.4 billion is expected to decline to just over 500 million by 2100.
“The belief that the year of the dragon brings good fortune may be helpful to some people,” said Huang Wenzheng, a demographer and senior fellow at the China Center on Globalization in Beijing. “If governments can think of more targeted ways to encourage births, it could make up to a 0.01 percentage point difference in birth rates,” he said.
Both Huang and Mocan believe that the Year of the Dragon could increase the number of newborns by about 1 million, bringing the annual total to 10 million. (According to Morkan’s research, the birth rate has skyrocketed in previous Dragon Years, increasing by about 300,000 in 2000 and 900,000 in 2012.)
One clue is an increase in marriages, a trend researchers have been observing since before the previous Dragon Years. In the first three quarters of 2023, the number of marriages in China is expected to increase by 4.5% year-on-year, reaching 7 million for the year, up from 6.8 million in 2022.
Sherry Yang, a consultant who connects Chinese women with fertility treatment centers in Kazakhstan, said she has received more inquiries over the past year than expected, given the state of China’s economy. One couple’s goal was to have three dragon children. We are planning to have triplets in August after undergoing in vitro fertilization.
But she believes much of the demand is due to the pandemic, which has forced many people to put their lives on hold.
“For the last three years, a lot of people couldn’t get pregnant. It was just too much trouble because of the health code and all the rules,” she said, adding that China’s strict rules for tracking residents’ health and whereabouts on their mobile phones He also mentioned the “zero coronavirus” regulations.
Other countries in Asia are also expecting a baby dragon, Boomlet. Teresa Tan, a postnatal care nanny who works for companies in Singapore and Malaysia, said she is fully booked until September, and the number of bookings has increased by about 40% compared to last year. “It definitely had an impact,” she said.
Kathy Tsai, an advisor at Infuncix, a postnatal care center in Taipei, Taiwan, said that in the past few months, customers have started booking rooms as soon as they are seven or eight weeks pregnant. In most cases, mothers wait about 12 weeks before making an appointment.
Mak Ling Ling, a famous Hong Kong fortune teller, said he has also seen an increase in inquiries about having children this year, including from female celebrities who he declined to name.
“Everyone is in a bit of a rush to have baby dragons,” she said. “The Chinese zodiac still has a big impact on the birth rate of Chinese people, but the problem now is that the economy is not good.”
The main factor influencing birthrate is likely to be economic rather than zodiac. Without significant improvements and major reforms in China’s slowing economy, it is unlikely that the birth rate will improve dramatically.
“Research shows that zodiac birth timing tends to influence not how many children a family ends up having, but when,” said Po Lin Tan, senior research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew Graduate School. “Therefore, it may not help solve the problem of low birth rates.” See research conducted in Public Policy, Hong Kong, National University of Singapore.
Fan, the Beijing demographer, said Chinese policymakers are not ambitious enough. He said: “There are no big incentives at the national level, and local governments rely on small grants, which are completely useless.”
Still, long-held beliefs are difficult to change. Han Yu, an economist at the University of Memphis in Tennessee who worked on a 2019 study linking parental expectations to the performance of dragon cubs, also hopes to have a child this old year.
He may be partial. He was also born in the year of the Dragon, and he remembers feeling a little special from an early age. “I think it’s great to have a baby dragon, especially if the father is a dragon,” he said.
Regine Cabato in Manila contributed to this report.