CHINA TO ALLOW COUPLES TO HAVE 3RD CHILD AMID DRAMATIC DECLINE IN BIRTHS

Mon 31 May 2021:

The ruling Chinese Communist Party has decided to allow the country’s married couples to have a third child, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Monday, amid concern over the low birthrate.

China will support couples that wish to have a third child, according to a meeting of the Political Bureau of Communist Party of China Central Committee held on Monday.

China’s population has been aging, due largely to its “one-child policy” introduced in 1979. But it was decided in 2016 that the policy would be scrapped as worries grew that a rapidly aging population would constrain the nation’s economic expansion.

The government has recently allowed all married couples to have a second child, but China has not seen a baby boom so far.

Early 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, to 1.41 billion.

Data also showed a fertility rate of just 1.3 children per woman for 2020 alone, on a par with ageing societies like Japan and Italy.

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