{"id":263176,"date":"2021-05-31T16:30:02","date_gmt":"2021-05-31T13:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/china-allows-couples-to-have-three-children-as-birthrate-falls\/"},"modified":"2021-05-31T16:30:02","modified_gmt":"2021-05-31T13:30:02","slug":"china-allows-couples-to-have-three-children-as-birthrate-falls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/china-allows-couples-to-have-three-children-as-birthrate-falls\/","title":{"rendered":"#China allows couples to have three children as birthrate falls"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#China allows couples to have three children as birthrate falls<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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\"China
\n China is relaxing its family planning policy to allow couples to have up to three children.
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China will allow couples to have three children after a census showed its population is rapidly ageing, state media<\/a> said Monday, further unwinding four decades of strict family planning controls in the world’s most populous nation which have strangled the birthrate.\n <\/p>\n

In 2016 China relaxed its controversial “one-child policy”\u2014one of the world’s strictest family planning regulations\u2014to a “two-child policy” due to widespread concerns over an ageing workforce and economic stagnation.<\/p>\n

Despite government efforts to encourage couples to have children, China’s annual births have continued to plummet to a record low of 12 million in 2020, the National Bureau of Statistics said last month, as the cost of living rises and women increasingly make their own family planning choices.<\/p>\n

The slump threatens a demographic crisis which has alarmed the ruling Communist Party headed by President Xi Jinping, booking in a shortage of young workers to drive an economy experts say will by 2050 will have to support hundreds of millions of elderly.<\/p>\n

A Monday meeting of the elite Politburo leadership committee hosted by Xi announced a further loosening of the state’s control over the size of families.<\/p>\n

“To actively respond to the ageing population … a couple can have three children,” state media Xinhua reported. <\/p>\n

The Politburo meeting also promised “accompanying support measures” that are also “conducive to the country’s population structure”, though these were left unspecified.<\/p>\n

Skewed gender balance<\/b><\/p>\n

China’s fertility rate stands at 1.3\u2014below the level needed to maintain a stable population, the National Bureau of Statistics revealed.<\/p>\n

The once-in-a-decade 2020 census results published last month also showed that China’s population grew at its slowest rate since the 1960s, reaching 1.41 billion.<\/p>\n

China’s gender balance has also been skewed by decades of the one-child policy, and a traditional social preference for boys which prompted a generation of sex-selective abortions and abandoned baby girls.<\/p>\n

Although the policy has been relaxed in the last few years, this has not prompted the baby boom policymakers had hoped for.<\/p>\n

Falling marriage rates in recent years have played out in slower birth rates, as have rising costs of living and increasingly empowered and educated women delaying or avoiding childbirth.<\/p>\n

It may be too late to reverse the downward trend, some experts say.<\/p>\n

“Most families have a preference for few children now\u2014akin to the rest of Northeast Asia,” said Lauren Johnston, a China economics and demography researcher at SOAS University of London.<\/p>\n

“By the time of the next census will there be many third children? Probably few.”<\/p>\n

As China ages, there are significant economic and political implications for the world’s second biggest economy.<\/p>\n

“It’s reasonable for the government to introduce policies to spur childbirths in the face of huge population pressure,” said 31-year-old Vivien, who is married. <\/p>\n

“Having children is a citizen’s contribution to their country.”<\/p>\n

A third of Chinese are forecast to be elderly by 2050, heaping huge pressure on the state to provide pensions and healthcare.<\/p>\n

But for a younger generation of women, living in the hyper-competitive normality of modern China’s cities where good work and accommodation are hard to find, the relaxation may have little attraction.<\/p>\n

“Personally, I don’t want to have even a single child,” a 27-year-old single woman who gave her name only as Wendy, told AFP.\n <\/p>\n\n

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China considers new actions to lift flagging birthrate<\/a>\n <\/div>\n

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\n \u00a9 2021 AFP<\/p>\n

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\n China allows couples to have three children as birthrate falls (2021, May 31)
\n retrieved 31 May 2021
\n from https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/news<\/a>\/2021-05-china-couples-children-birthrate-falls.html<\/p>\n

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