Hard part will be undoing it has European nations has found out.
We do that here too—for taker families. Makers postpone childbearing because they are busy building a decent nest, an effort made more difficult by the taxes they pay to support the less prudent and more biologically productive.
Maybe the Chinese forgot how
Outlaw abortion.
A number of European nations, Japan and Singapore have shown that financial incentives like this do NOT work.
When you have an anti-natalist view, telling people how hard it is to raise children, how expensive it is, that the planet is dying and too many children are akin to murder of both them and Mommy Earth ... paying the people who grew up in that “environment” to have another baby only leads to those who wanted two children having the second sooner than planned.
You have to truly change the culture to pro-life and respect for families to turn it around. Hungary is managing this.
Georgia has, as well, with the head of their national church personally becoming the Godfather of all third and later children. So they’ve managed to raise the rate of third and fourth born children even as the number of illegitimate children has declined. This is an example of how religious cultural institutions CAN turn around birth rate declines while no state has achieved it without totalitarian coercion (looking at you Romania).
The ultimate statist intrusion into women’s bodies. (pun intended)
I approve and wish China well. As you suggested, I pray that Europe will learn that lesson before it is too late.
Like it or not, by giving women equal rights, we have made having children just another ‘career choice’ that women now have. And given that kids are a huge DRAIN on finances, whereas climbing the corporate latter without kids, or certainly without many kids, is just the opposite, no one should be surprised out this outcome.
Having said that, there are really just two options: Turn back the clock to Leave it to Beaver days, or pay women to have to have kids, at least if they’re part of a productive family (as opposed to welfare queens). Until countries do that, their demographic death spiral will continue, and NOTHING will stop it.
LOL, used to have a “One Child” policy. Nothing like government control.