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Do you know how many new people will be added to the country in 2020? 480,000 people, which dr. Lilac calculated according to the data of the National Bureau of Statistics.
It can also be seen from Dr. Lilac's chart that the peak of the new population in China was 10.06 million in 2012, but the new population in 2020 was only 480,000, the lowest year in the past 20 years, and the new population in 2012 formed a sharp contrast.
As for why the new population in 2020 is so low, Dr. Ding Xiang also added that it is mainly due to the "continuous decline in the number of women of childbearing age" and "the continuous decline in fertility levels", in other words, there are too few women suitable for having children and too few women who are willing to have children. It is clear that we have entered the bottleneck of slow population growth, and the labor force will become an important issue in the future.
In fact, it is not only us who are worried about this problem, Musk, the founder of Tesla, a foreign technology giant, also pointed out in recent days that "the future society will face the problem of labor shortage", and he also discussed with several other well-known technology giants how to solve this problem. Among them, many bigwigs such as Gumroad founder Lavinia and Ethereum founder Butering support the same view - "replacing the 'pregnancy burden' with an artificial womb so that women can continue to work."
Is it feasible for an artificial womb to replace a woman to have a child?
In the author's view, humans already have artificial mammal technology like cloning sheep Dolly, including a domestic university associate professor in 2018 who also successfully genetically edited a pair of babies, so the artificial womb is not a technical problem at all, more or the double-edged sword problem behind the artificial uterus.
Artificial sheep culture process
To know that one of the main reasons for the low domestic fertility rate is that the current wedding dowry is too high and the house price is too high, and even many women require the man to have a car and a house to consider marriage, resulting in a decline in the domestic marriage rate, thus reducing the fertility rate.
On the other hand, even if the man spares all his efforts to borrow money to buy a house, the mortgage pressure after marriage still makes this small family dare not easily have children, especially the cost of education and living costs of children is a very headache. You have to apply for interest classes in elementary school, you have to apply for training classes in junior high schools, and you have to apply for training classes during the period, and there are a series of problems such as eating, drinking, and sleeping. When the child grows up, he will start to take care of the parents of both sides for the elderly.
Maybe you will say that the old children gave a meal and a few pieces of clothing and pulled up, where is it so difficult? You must know that the current competition is becoming more and more fierce, you do not give your children a good growth environment, the future is lagging behind your children, which is also a kind of "inner volume".
Therefore, the author believes that if the artificial womb technology is really applied to reality, it will definitely increase the domestic fertility rate. After all, without the two major problems of high bride price and high house price, the cost of childbearing and raising children can be greatly reduced.
And after women do not have to give birth, they can also spend more time on work and self-improvement, and do not have to face a series of problems brought about by the postpartum period, and even do not have to take maternity leave, which greatly improves the labor force of the female group.
But the artificial womb also has certain disadvantages, the biggest problem is that it violates the laws of nature.
Imagine if we didn't need women to have children, then the ratio of men to women in this world would be imbalanced, after all, men are better than women, and most people will choose boys.
Not only that, but when we can artificially create a womb, we will also face the moral and ethical problems of gene editing. Will rich people let doctors edit their children's genes better, so that the children born are stronger and smarter? This is also a difficult problem for biology to overcome.
If gene editing of children is really allowed, then the future society will also be out of balance. Including a science fiction movie that I once watched, ordinary people who have not edited genes can only sit in the office and do cleaning, and children who have been edited for genes have better eyesight and stronger bodies, and can be astronauts, pilots and so on.
Write at the end
The era of demographic dividends and other times has passed, and the era of grabbing a large number of people entering the factory has also passed. Declining fertility and declining population growth will be problems we need to face together.
Especially today's young people, especially after 95 and 00, they have received higher education from universities, and their quality of life and requirements will be very clear. They don't farm at home, they don't leave their wives at home and work alone in factories.
This is also a kind of change for the factories and enterprises of the future, and it is no longer possible to recruit people casually, and it is no longer possible to let employees work in two shifts.
If fertility rates and population numbers continue to decline, perhaps one day artificial wombs will really appear in our lives. Would you consider giving birth through an artificial womb?
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