Mainland China should open door to foreign helpers
- Relaxing restrictions on such workers in China may help boost the birth rate by easing the pressure on working couples and particularly women
China’s falling birth rate, declining fertility levels and ageing population have grave implications for the nation’s development. The mainland government’s encouraging of couples to have up to three children is a viable strategy to reverse the trend, but so complex an issue requires a many faceted response.
It is complicated by the high cost of child-rearing and women increasingly putting careers ahead of starting a family. One part of the solution may lie in relaxing restrictions on foreign domestic helpers.
A domestic helper eases the burden on couples of taking care of children and elderly parents, leaving more time for work and leisure. But unlike in Hong Kong and other places in Asia, which have traditions of hiring foreign helpers, mostly from Indonesia and the Philippines, Beijing has resisted following suit.
That is despite growing pressure, particularly from middle-class families, who often balk at paying considerably higher costs to hire local helpers. The average monthly wage for a helper in a big mainland city is 10,000 yuan (HK$12,380), compared to Hong Kong’s minimum of HK$4,630.
A population research company, YuWa, estimated that the mainland’s birth rate could be increased by 2 percentage points, or about 200,000 babies, if families could hire 3 million foreign helpers for salaries similar to those in Hong Kong. If the approach was adopted, the financial saving was put at more than 200 billion yuan a year, which could go towards offsetting the costs of education and housing.
The analysis would appear to be backed by a survey by Hong Kong’s Baptist University that determined couples with foreign domestic helpers were 13 per cent more likely to have a second child, although the condition did not hold for a third baby. The reason was that being relieved of child-rearing and household chores gave working mothers and fathers up to 6.5 hours more free time a week.
Mainland women complain that the burden of child-rearing too often falls on their shoulders. Increasingly well-educated, many are frustrated by the prospect of putting careers on hold or missing out on promotion by starting a family. Education reforms, housing subsidies and more nurseries are among ways to boost the population. Opening the door to foreign helpers may also assist.
