China lifts cap on births per family, announces families can have three children

BEIJING: China said on Monday (May 31, 2021) that married couples could have three children, a key policy from the current limit of two after recent figures show a dramatic drop in birth in the world's most populous country Change.

   Photo Credit : Zee News India

Beijing scrapped its decades-old one-child policy in 2016 and replaced it with a two-child limit, which failed to see a sustained increase in births given the high cost of raising children in Chinese cities – a challenge that Has been made.

The official news agency Xinhua said in a report after the Politburo meeting chaired by President Xi Jinping, "To further optimize the birth policy, (China) one-married-couple-have-three-child policy Will implement. "

The news agency Xinhua said the change in policy "will come with supportive measures that will be conducive to improving our country's population structure, actively coping with the country's aging population and maintaining the benefits of human resources" Will complete the strategy. "

It did not specify support measures.

"People lag behind the unbelievably high cost of raising children, not the two-child limit, but in today's China. Housing, extra-curricular activities, food, trips, and everything else quickly add up," Yifei, a sociologist Lee told Reuters, at NYU Shanghai.

"Increasing the limit is not a possibility for me to bend one's calculus in a meaningful way," he said.

In a poll asking #AreYouReady for a three-child policy on Xinhua's Weibo account, nearly 29,000 out of 31,000 respondents said they would "never think about it" while the rest chose from options: "I'm ready And looking forward to it. Do this", "It's on my agenda", or "I'm hesitant and have a lot to consider".

The pole was later removed.

One user posted, "If you give me 5 million yuan ($785,650), I'm ready to have three kids."

Stocks of birth- and fertility-related companies rose.

slow growth

Earlier this month, a once-in-a-decade census of China showed that the population grew at the slowest rate during the last decade to 1.41 billion since the 1950s. The data showed fertility rates of just 1.3 children per woman for 2020 alone comparable to aging societies such as Japan and Italy.

China's Politburo also said that it would be a delayed phase in retirement age, but did not provide any details.

By the end of last year, people were being fined 130,000 yuan ($ 20,440) for having a third child.

"I'm very happy," said human resource manager Su Meizhen in Beijing, who is pregnant with her third child.

"We won't have to pay a fine and we'll be able to get a hukou," she said, referring to an urban residence permit that enables families to receive benefits, including sending their children to local public schools.