Concerned about China’s dwindling population, government policy advisers have made more than 20 recommendations to raise birth rates, though experts say the best they can do is slow population decline.
China carved itself a demographic hole largely through its one-child policy enforced between 1980 and 2015. Authorities raised the limit to three in 2021, but even during COVID stay-at-home couples they have been reluctant to have children.
Young people cite high childcare and education costs, low incomes, a weak social safety net, and gender inequalities as daunting factors.
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Proposals to raise the birth rate, presented this month at the annual meeting of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), range from subsidies for families raising their first child, rather than just the second and third, to expanding free public education and improving access to fertility treatments.
Experts took the sheer number of proposals as a positive sign that China was dealing urgently with its aging and declining population, after data showed its population shrank for the first time in six decades. Last year.
“You can’t change the declining trend,” said Xiujian Peng, a senior researcher at the Center of Policy Studies at Victoria University in Australia. “But without any fertility-encouraging policy, fertility will also decline
further.”
A person holds a girl while a boy drives a toy car at a shopping mall in Shanghai, China, June 1, 2021. (REUTERS/Aly Song)
A motion by CPPCC member Jiang Shengnan that young men work just eight hours a day so they have time to “fall in love, get married and have children” was key to ensuring women were not overworked, he said Peng.
Giving incentives to have a first child could encourage couples to have at least one child, he said. Many provinces currently subsidize only the second and third child.
To help ease the strain on young families, the National Health Commission (NHC) on Wednesday issued draft rules that would allow qualified individuals to run day care operations for up to five children up to age three.
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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 that China will age before it gets rich, as its workforce shrinks and indebted local governments spend more on their aging population.
Experts also praised the proposal to scrap all family planning measures, including the three-child limit and the requirement for women to be legally married to register their children.
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Arjan Gjonca, an associate professor at the London School of Economics, said financial incentives were not enough and policies focusing on gender equality and better employment rights for women were likely to have a greater impact.
CPPCC proposals such as maternity leave paid for by the government rather than the employer would help reduce discrimination against women, while increasing paternity leave removes a barrier for fathers to take on more parenting responsibilities, they said the experts.
Demographer Yi Fuxian remains skeptical that any measure alone could have a significant impact, saying that China needed a “paradigm revolution of its entire economy, society, politics and diplomacy to boost fertility.”
