China introduces three-child policy to alleviate problem of ageing population
The one-child policy was relaxed in 2015. (Reuters: Kim Kyung-Hoon, file)
China's government has announced it is scrapping a policy limiting couples to two children and will now allow them to have three.
Key points:
- China is the world's most populous country, but one in three people are projected to be of retirement age by 2050
- Earlier this month, China's census showed the population grew at its slowest rate during the last decade since the 1950s
- China's Politburo also announced it would phase in delays in the country's retirement ages, but did not provide any details
The change was approved during a Politburo meeting chaired by President Xi Jinping, according to official news agency Xinhua.
The government said the problem of an ageing populace was deepening and the change would help to improve the structure of China's population and maintain its advantage in human resources.
The policy change will come with "supportive measures, which will be conducive to improving our country's population structure, fulfilling the country's strategy of actively coping with an ageing population and maintaining the advantage, endowment of human resources", Xinhua said.
Among those measures, China will lower educational costs for families, step up tax and housing support, guarantee the legal interests of working women and clamp down on "sky-high" dowries, it said, without giving specifics. It would also look to educate young people "on marriage and love".
"People are held back not by the two-children limit, but by the incredibly high costs of raising children in today's China," said Yifei Li, a sociologist at NYU Shanghai.
"Housing, extracurricular activities, food, trips, and everything else add up quickly. Raising the limit itself is unlikely to tilt anyone's calculus in a meaningful way, in my view."
The announcement drew a chilly response on Chinese social media, where many people said they could not afford to have even one or two children.
"I am willing to have three children if you give me 5 million yuan ($1.02 million)," one user posted on Weibo.
China's census shows slow population growth
With 1.4 billion people, China is the world's most populous country, but by 2050 one in three of them are projected to be of retirement age.
In 2015, China scrapped its decades-old one-child policy — initially imposed to halt a population explosion — with a two-child limit, which failed to result in a sustained surge in births as the high cost of raising children in Chinese cities deterred many couples from starting families.
Earlier this month, China's once-in-a-decade census showed that the population grew at its slowest rate during the last decade since the 1950s, with data showing a fertility rate of 1.3 children per woman for 2020 alone, on par with ageing societies like Japan and Italy.
China's Politburo also announced it would phase in delays in the country's retirement ages but did not provide any details.
Fines of 130,000 yuan ($26,412) were being imposed on people for having a third child as of late last year.
"I'm super happy," said Su Meizhen, a human resources manager in Beijing who is pregnant with her third child.
"We won't have to pay the fine and we'll be able to get a hukou," she said, referring to the urban residence permit that enables families to receive benefits, including sending their children to local public schools.
ABC/Wires