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City鈥檚 parents to be allowed more leave
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SHANGHAI’S new fathers are to get an extra week’s paid paternity leave from next month after city lawmakers approved an amended family planning law that allows couples to have a second child. National legislation to encourage all couples to have two children took effect on January 1.
“We encourage husbands to take more care of their wives,” said Wu Jinglei, head of the Shanghai Health and Family Planning Commission.
Men currently enjoy just three days’ paid leave.
Maternity leave will also increase, with 30 days added to the current 98 days stipulated by the national legislature.
The 30 days used to be an incentive for women to delay giving birth until after the age of 24, but it will now apply to everyone.
Under the amended law, couples who remarry will be allowed more children under three specific circumstances.
If either partner had a child from an earlier marriage, they were previously allowed one more child. From March 1, they will be allowed two more.
If there are two or more children from a previous marriage, the couple can now have another.
If the couple had no children from a previous marriage and now have two, one of whom is diagnosed with a non-genetic disability, they will be allowed another.
Shanghai officials estimate that an extra 40,000 to 50,000 babies will be born each year because of the two-child policy.
They said the city should see around 260,000 births this year and 276,000 in 2017.
That will fall from 2019 when the number of women at peak birth age drops, they said.
“This new population policy benefits local couples with no spouse from a one-child family who have delivered one child,” Wu said. “There are about 776,000 such couples in the city.”
Since Shanghai allowed couples with one spouse from a one-child family to have a second child in March 2014, about 33,900 eligible couples had applied.
So far, 18,000 couples had delivered a second child and some 6,000 women were expecting one.
Also under the amended law, all local couples will get an additional seven days’ marriage leave in addition to the three days stipulated by the national legislature.
Previously, only men who got married after 25, or women after 23, could enjoy 10 days’ leave.
The national legislature amended the family planning law to end the nation’s decades-old one-child policy in an attempt to balance population development and offset the burden of an aging demographic.
The national family planning commission estimates that about 90 million families will qualify for the second-child policy, which would help raise the population to an estimated 1.45 billion by 2030.
China had 1.37 billion people at the end of 2014.
The one-child policy was introduced in 1979 in an effort to rein in the surging population.
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