Isaiah Kriegman / blog /

Why Israel has a higher birthrate than China

This is a good article that dispels some of the single-variable explanations of the fertility crisis. It’s not housing, it’s not education, it’s not social services, etc. Israel suffers from all of these supposed causes too; they just like having kids more. https://x.com/MoreBirths/status/1870911221630685465

I want to add one bit: what about China? Their culture also revolves around family, but their birthrate is plummeting. I recall in the book Wild Swans that the author’s grandmother lived in a home with five generations under one roof. This was so admirable to early 20th century Chinese that their whole street was renamed to “Five Generations In One House Street”.

Could it be the communists and their war on the family? For most of Chinese civilization Chinese people were clan oriented. This changed when the communists endeavored to replace every source of tradition and authority with the party. During the cultural revolution, streets like “Five Generations In One House Street” were given new names like “Class Struggle Street”. An underappreciated aspect of the one-child policy was that it de facto destroyed most Chinese clans.

But, other East Asian countries without histories of communist revolutions also face plummeting birth rates and share the same family-oriented culture.

Could it be the rapid economic growth? There are many great Chinese films on the topic of rapid economic growth and how it has disrupted families and traditions. The 1999 film Shower tells the story of an older father running a quaint Beijing bathhouse and his relationship to his suit donning businessman son in faraway Shenzhen. The 2009 documentary Last Train Home depicts a daughter who leaves her family to work in a factory and find independence after her parents left to work in factory in order to provide for her. The mass migration of people from the countryside to the cities rips families and local ties apart. Changing financial incentives can draw people away from their families.

But, I still think Israel is an exception here. Israel has also experienced high economic growth, beating the U.S. most years. It is famously entrepreneurial. Do kids leave home to strike it rich? Israel is small, so you’re never far from home. But even the Israelis I know living in the U.S. often have three kids.

As someone who has spent a lot of time in China and in Israel, I suppose the birthrate gap makes sense: Jews are humorous about having kids while Chinese people can be humorless about it. Let me explain:

In dynastic China, filial piety was the law. You could be put to death for sufficiently disrespecting your parents. Much of the Confucian canon is as if you were to expand the phrase “Honor thy father and thy mother” into a whole religion (obviously an oversimplification). There is a common refrain among Chinese Americans I know that when they come home for the holidays their grandparents guilt them for being single. Have you ever heard of Chinese marriage corners? Parents meet up to desperately marry off their unmarried children. Row after row of placards read “34. Income 480,000 RMB. 170cm. Has car…”

Some photos I took:

This is pretty instense stuff.

In Israel, it’s not like this. It’s fun! A stranger in a drugstore tried to set me up with her hotel receptionist. An older religious guy on the bus asked my friend if she wanted to marry his son. When I was asking friends of friends about advice on moving to Israel, one woman assured me that she would set me up with her friend.

Israelis are just more fun about having kids! It’s one of the many reasons I am proud to be an Israeli now :)