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More young people in Shanghai hesitate to have kids

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-10-23 00:02

SHANGHAI: More young people in Shanghai are reluctant to have children due to the rise of nursing cost and increase of competition pressure in work, said local authorities Thursday.

According to statistics from the Shanghai population and family planning commission, 7.93 percent of local residents between 20 and 45 hesitate to have kids, up 3.37 percentage points from 2003.

Among the floating population, 2.49 percent are unwilling to have kids, up 1.1 percentage points from 2004.

The rise of nursing cost was attributed as a main cause of the hesitation, as 52.99 percent of respondents in a survey by the family planning commission chose that factor.

Besides, 48.28 percent of the respondents said they just want to enjoy the "world of two", while 35.10 percent are afraid that having children would hamper their career.

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Xie Lingli, director of the commission, noted that those who have master's degree or doctorate and the group who even did not finish their junior middle school show relatively higher willingness to have kids.

The commission made the survey among 12,000 people. It found that married people, men and people who have siblings also show higher willingness than unmarried people, women and people from single-child families.

Xie said the continuous increase of people who are reluctant to have children will speed up the ageing trend of population. The commission estimated that by 2035, about 40 percent of the population in Shanghai would be above 60.

China has become a country of the largest senior population in the world, where the number of elderly people above 60 has reached 160 million, accounting for 12 percent of the country's population.