2nd child law a balancing act
Print Edition
AFTER more than 30 years extolling the benefits of having only one child, the government yesterday issued a reminder to couples nationwide that many of them are now well within their rights to have two.
Under new family planning regulations released last year, more than 11 million couples across the country are now entitled to have a second child, the National Health and Family Planning Commission told a press conference yesterday.
The change in the law makes it possible for couples to have a second child if either parent is an only child. Since being given the green light by the National People’s Congress in December, the regulation has been implemented nationwide, except in the autonomous regions of Tibet and Xinjiang.
While there are as yet no plans to allow all families to have more than one child, the relaxed rules are indicative of the government’s new stance on population control, the commission said yesterday.
This is partly a response to a rapidly expanding elderly demographic and a steep decline in the number of people of working age, it said.
As of the end of May, 271,600 eligible couples had applied to have a second baby, of which more than 241,000 had been approved, commission official Yang Wenzhuang said.
Despite fears the rule change will spark a baby boom, Yang said that is unlikely.
“According to our forecasts, there will be an extra 2 million babies born each year over the next five years,” he said.
Despite the new rule, China’s key family planning principles have not changed, Yang said.
In Shanghai, the baby boom that began in 2006 is likely to continue through 2016, but should slow in 2017, the city’s health and family planning commission said yesterday.
About 85,300 children were born in the city in the first five months of this year — up 6 percent on the equivalent period of 2013 — and the full-year total is expected to be about 205,000, it said.
As in many cities, one of the key problems facing Shanghai is the imbalance between non-working seniors and young people, officials said.
Shanghai adopted the new family planning regulations in March. From that time through the end of June, almost 8,000 couples applied to have a second child.
That total is expected to grow to 20,000 by the end of the year, the commission said.
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