China allows couples to have three children as the birth rate decreases

China will allow couples to have three children after a census shows its population is aging rapidly, state media reported Monday, unleashing four more decades of strict family planning controls on the world’s most populous nation. strangled the birth rate.

In 2016, China relaxed its controversial “one-child policy“-One of the strictest family planning regulations in the world- to a” two-child policy “due to widespread concerns about the aging workforce and economic stagnation.

Despite government efforts to encourage couples to have children, China’s annual births have continued to fall to a record low of 12 million in 2020, the National Bureau of Statistics said last month as the cost of life increases and women increasingly do their own family planning. options.

The fall threatens a demographic crisis that has alarmed ruling Communist Party leader led by President Xi Jinping, who reserves a shortage of young workers to boost an economy, experts say, that by 2050 will have to support hundreds of millions of seniors.

A meeting of the Politburo’s elite steering committee on Monday, organized by Xi, announced a further loosening of state control over the size of families.

“Actively reply to population aging … a couple can have three children ” state media Xinhua reported.

The Politburo meeting also promised “accompanying measures” that will also “be favorable to the country population structure“, although they were left unspecified.

Biased gender balance

From China fertility rate stands at 1.3, below the level needed to maintain a stable population, the National Bureau of Statistics revealed.

The 2020 census results released last month also showed that the Chinese population grew at its slowest pace since the 1960s, reaching 1.44 billion.

From China gender balance it has also been skewed by decades of one-child politics and a traditional social preference for boys that led to a generation of sex-selective abortions and abandoned babies.

While politics has relaxed in recent years, this has not caused baby boomers to wait.

Falling marriage rates in recent years have resulted in slower birth rates, as well as rising cost of living and increasingly skilled and educated women who delay or avoid childbirth.

Some experts say it may be too late to reverse the downward trend.

“Most families have a preference for a few children now, similar to the rest of Northeast Asia,” said Lauren Johnston, a researcher in China’s economics and demography at SOAS University in London.

“At the time of the next census there will be many third children? Probably few.”

As China ages, there are important economic and political implications for the world’s second largest economy.

“It is reasonable for the government to introduce policies to stimulate the parties in the face of huge parties population pressure, ”said Vivien, 31, married.

“To own children it is a citizen ‘s contribution to his country. “

One-third of Chinese are expected to be elderly by 2050, which puts enormous pressure on the state to provide pensions and health care.

But for a younger generation of women, living in the hyper-competitive normalcy of modern Chinese cities where it is difficult to find a good job and accommodation, relaxation may have little attraction.

“Personally, I don’t want to have a single child,” a 27-year-old single woman who only gave her Wendy name told AFP.

© 2021 AFP