DIRS.INFO The most relevant business & tech news

Beijing/Hong Kong CNN —Married for seven years, Hansen and his wife Momo care for six little ones at their apartment in downtown Beijing. By 2030, the number of pets in urban China alone will almost double the number of young children across the country, according to its projection. The country’s pet ownership rate would be even higher if the number of dogs and cats in rural areas were included. Its birth rate also dipped to 6.39 births per 1,000 people, the lowest rate since the founding of Communist China in 1949. I think it’s just that we love dogs,” Hansen said.

Persons: Hong Kong CNN —, Hansen, Momo, ”, Beijing hasn’t, they’ve, Justin Robertson, Goldman Sachs, Mao Zedong’s, Goldman, It’s, “, Tao, CNN Tao, CNN Stuart Gietel, aren’t, Basten, “ We’re, ” Hansen, Xi Jinping Organizations: Hong Kong CNN, Research, CNN, Publishing, Authorities, Communist, Hong Kong University of Science, Technology Locations: China, Beijing, Hong Kong, Australia, France, India, Japan, East China's Jiangsu, Communist China, Basten

☆ Asia's governments seem to think declining birth rates have to do just with dating and sex. That's not the full story.
▼ + stars: | 2024-07-29 | by ( Kwan Wei Kevin Tan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

AdvertisementDeclining birth rates have been a huge bugbear for Asian countries like Japan and South Korea. Vanessa LeeLee, who owns two dogs and a cat, said that governments may be overestimating the effectiveness of one-off interventions in bolstering birth rates. AdvertisementShe added that a shift in societal mindsets toward work and family needs to occur for her peers to consider having children. But it also doesn't guarantee that having sex brings children and that not having sex is the only reason why people are not having children," Gietel-Basten said. Low birth rates, according to HKUST's Gietel-Basten, are a "barometer of the challenges in society" and should thus be seen as "symptoms of problems in a society."

Persons: —, Vanessa Lee, Lee, Elon Musk, Paulin Straughan, Poh Lin Tan, Tan, Jonas Hue, Vanessa Lee Lee, It's, Emily Huang, Stuart Gietel, Basten, SMU's Straughan, Straughan, HKUST's, we're Organizations: Service, Business, Internal, Ministry, Asahi Shimbun, South, Singapore Management University, Singapore's Institute of Policy, Nordic, Hong Kong University of Science, Technology Locations: Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Korea, Tokyo, Seoul, Sweden, Finland, Hong Kong, Basten

☆ Paternity leave: In Japan, it's four weeks, but men are too afraid to take it
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-26 | by ( Chris Lau | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

Japanese men are entitled to four weeks of flexible paternity leave, on up to 80% of their salary, under a bill passed by the Japanese parliament in 2021. While it is illegal to discriminate against workers who take maternity and paternity leave in Japan, Iwahashi said workers on fixed-term contracts were particularly vulnerable. And anyway, “A little tweak on paternity leave won’t significantly change a declining birth rate,” he added. He also unveiled a plan aimed at boosting the uptake of paternity leave by encouraging firms to disclose their performance. But he saw a silver lining in encouraging paternity leave.

[1/7] Farmer Wang Zhanling sits next to his wife in their house in Quansheng village, Heilongjiang Province, China, February 8, 2023. The state-run Chinese Academy of Sciences sees the pension system running out of money by 2035. "If the pension system does not change, this is unsustainable," said Xiujian Peng, senior research fellow in the Centre of Policy Studies at Victoria University in Australia. The province has the lowest birth rate in China, with just over 100,000 births in 2021 and 460,000 deaths. Many experts, including Macquarie's chief China economist Larry Hu, suggest implementing a unified national pension system, backstopped by the more resourceful central government rather than cash-strapped local administrations.

☆ A Chinese city is offering couples almost $2,900 to have a third child and some others are giving newlyweds paid marriage leave to help boost the birth rate
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-24 | by ( Huileng Tan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

The Chinese city of Hangzhou is giving $2,900 to parents welcoming a third child this year. Some other cities are giving almost 30 days of marriage leave to boost the birth rate. Meanwhile, the northeastern city of Shenyang is offering subsidies of up to $72 a month till a child is three years old. Chinese employees are typically entitled to three days of paid marriage leave. The push for babies comes after China's population started shrinking for the first time in six decades.

☆ China has to figure out how to care for 400 million people over the age of 60 by 2040 — and it's off to a rocky start
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-20 | by ( Matthew Loh | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

By 2040, it's expected to have 400 million people above the age of 60 — more people than in the entire US. "It's obvious that relying on contributions from medical insurance schemes to fund age care services is not likely to be viable in the longer term," she said. Alzheimer's is quickly rising as a concern in China, Luk said. "Is China aging rapidly? Beijing has been pressuring the private sector into building daycare centers, wards, and other age care infrastructure to shore up gaps in local government finances, Gu said.

☆ Explainer: What we know about China's medical reform protests
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-16 | by ( Laurie Chen | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

WHAT ARE THE MEDICAL INSURANCE REFORMS? Beginning Feb. 1, personal medical insurance benefits for Wuhan retirees were slashed from about 5% of the average basic pension to 2.5%, or 83 yuan ($12) per month, according to the Wuhan Healthcare Security Administration. In an essay published Thursday that did not refer to the protests, Finance Minister Liu Kun vowed to "deepen the reform of medical insurance payment methods". Following initial protests in Wuhan last week, the hashtag "Major adjustment in Wuhan medical reform" was viewed over 100 million times before being blocked. Since January, similar insurance reforms have been rolled out in provinces and regions including Jiangxi, Gansu，Shanxi, Qinghai, Sichuan and Guangxi.

☆ As world population hits 8 billion, China frets over too few babies
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-14 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

Such decisions by countless people like Tang will determine the course not only of China's population but that of the world, which the United Nations says is projected to reach 8 billion on Tuesday. Tang, 39, said many of his married friends have only one child and, like him, they are not planning any more. But now the United Nations expects China's population will start shrinking from next year, when India will likely become the world’s most populous country. China's fertility rate of 1.16 in 2021 was below the 2.1 OECD standard for a stable population and among the lowest in the world. The proportion of the population over the age of 65 is now about 13% but is set to rise sharply.

Search resuls for: "Stuart Gietel"

8 mentions found