China is currently brainstorming to boost the low birth rate after adopting a multi-year one-child policy.
Worried about China’s declining population, government policy advisers have put forward more than 20 recommendations to boost the birth rate, though experts say the best they can do is slow the population decline.
China dug into the demographic hole largely thanks to One child policy introduced between 1980 and 2015. Authorities raised the limit to three in 2021, but even while staying at home during COVID times, couples were reluctant to have children.
Young people cite high spending on childcare and education, low incomes, weak social safety nets and gender inequality as discouraging factors.
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Proposals to boost the birth rate, made at the annual meeting of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) this month, range from subsidizing first child families, not just second and third ones, to expanding free public education and improving access to fertility treatment.
Experts took the sheer volume of proposals as a positive sign that China is urgently considering its aging and demographic decline, after data showed the population was shrinking for the first time in six decades last year.
“You can’t reverse the downward trend,” said Xujian Peng, a senior fellow at the Center for Policy Studies at the University of Victoria in Australia. “But without any policy to encourage the birth rate, the birth rate will decline even
further.”
A man holds a girl as a boy drives a toy car at a shopping mall in Shanghai, China, 1 June 2021. (REUTERS/Ali Song)
Peng said CPPCC member Jiang Shengnan’s suggestion that young people work only eight hours a day so they have time to “fall in love, get married and have children” was critical to ensuring that women don’t overwork.
Providing incentives to have a first child can encourage couples to have at least one child, she said. Many provinces currently only subsidize second and third children.
To ease the burden on young families, the National Health Commission (NHC) on Wednesday released draft rules that would allow qualified individuals to manage day care for up to five children under the age of three.
China’s birth rate fell to 6.77 births per 1,000 people last year from 7.52 births in 2021, the lowest on record.
Demographers warn china get old before he gets rich as his workforce shrinks and indebted local governments spend more on their elderly population.
The experts also commended the proposal to end all family planning measures, including the three-child limit and the requirement for legally married women to register their children.
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Arjan Gjonka, an associate professor at the London School of Economics, said financial incentives are not enough and policies to promote gender equality and improve women’s rights to work are likely to have a greater impact.
Experts say CPPCC proposals such as maternity leave paid by the state rather than the employer will help reduce discrimination against women, while increasing paternity leave removes barriers to fathers taking on more parental responsibilities.
Demographer Yi Fuxian remains doubtful that any measure alone will have a significant impact, saying China needs “a paradigm revolution in its entire economy, society, politics and diplomacy to boost its birth rate.”