It may be that the People’s Republic of China will start subsidizing mainland Chinese families who have more than one child, to the tune of 800 yuan per child for a family’s second and third children per month. Is that a little, or a lot?

The PRC’s 2024 per capita GDP in nominal terms is a bit over $13,000, which works out to 92,300 yuan, or 7,700 yuan per month. Those 800 yuan are roughly $113.

Using data from just before the Wuhan Virus Situation, per capita household electricity consumption was some 750 kilowatt-hours per month. That consumption cost $0.083 per kilowatt-hour; that works out to roughly 425 yuan per month.

Food consumption cost mainland Chinese roughly $270, or 1,915 yuan per month for a family of three, rising (in a naïve estimate) to $360 per month, or 2,555 yuan for a family upsized to four.

In those broad strokes, it seems that electricity and food consume that subsidy before getting to housing, which already is badly under water, for all that the housing industry may be—may be—turning around.

Given the decision of mainland Chinese families not to have more than one child, even after the murderously enforced one-child edict was lifted, this likely won’t increase family size in the PRC. And that’s separate from the editors’ note that child subsidies have never worked anywhere.