The country is offering families cash incentives to have more children as the tiny Himalayan kingdom grapples with a nosediving birthrate and a growing exodus of young people seeking opportunities abroad.
Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay has repeatedly rung the alarm over the population slump, calling it an “existential” crisis, according to the state’s Bhutan Broadcasting Service.
“The evidence is unambiguous – Bhutan’s fertility has declined to near or below replacement level,” Tobgay wrote in the introduction to the government’s “Third Child Plus” programme, launched last month. The scheme provides monthly payments of US$105 (RM427) for each third or subsequent child until they turn three.
Bhutan’s fertility rate has fallen to about 1.8 children per woman, below the replacement level, while the share of people aged 65 and over is projected to rise from around 6% to 17% by 2050, according to UN estimates.
“They (the statistics) represent real and compounding pressures on Bhutan’s workforce, fiscal sustainability and the social fabric of communities across the country,” Tobgay said.
The UN Population Fund, which supported the programme, advocates for “expanding choices for everyone” through affordable childcare and supportive social policies, rather than simply raising birth numbers.
Anthropologist Shawn Rowlands, who teaches in Thimphu, said Bhutan’s demographic transition had been unusually swift.
“Given the fact that it has gone from a high of about 6.6 in the 1990s to about 1.8 today, this is quite a remarkable demographic shift,” he said.
Yet Rowlands questioned whether a declining population should automatically be viewed as a crisis – in a country known for prioritising “Gross National Happiness” over economic growth and for its green credentials as a rare carbon-negative nation.
“Higher access to education and job opportunities lead to fewer women having children. I do not see that as a bad thing at all,” he said. — AFP
