Birth rate rises to highest level since 2000
Print Edition
CHINA’S decision to allow all couples to have two children instead of one has resulted in the birth rate rising to its highest level since 2000.
According to a document released by the National Health and Family Planning Commission, 18.46 million babies were born last year, the highest since 2000 and 1.31 million more than in 2015.
In the first year since the end of the one-child policy, more than 45 percent of newborns were not the first child.
This is a 10 percent increase from 2013, when an easing of the policy allowed couples to have a second child if either parent was an only child.
The government is keen to encourage more parents to have two children.
However, Huang Wenzheng, a demographer, said the rise in newborns after China’s shift to the two-child policy was not satisfactory. “People’s interest in expanding their family has waned,” he said.
According to a survey by the commission, the majority of families expressed no desire to have a second child due to financial and childcare concerns.
The survey showed that spending on children accounts for nearly a half the average total income of a household.
Only 4 percent of babies under 3 in China were born in specialized institutions, compared with 50 percent in developed countries, the survey noted, adding that rising housing price and employment discrimination against women due to maternity leave were also influential.
To increase the fertility rate in China, the government should roll out measures to ensure that people can afford to raise more children, said Lu Jiehua, a sociologist with Peking University.
The central government has already made efforts to better allocate public resources to address couples’ concerns.
More than 40 departments are improving policies in fields including health care, education, social security and taxation, upgrading maternity and child medical services as well as child care services, and formulating polices securing jobs and maternity leave for women, according to the commission’s Yang Wenzhuang.
“It will take five to 10 years before the results yielded by the policies show, and that’s why we lost no time in making and implementing the policies,” Yang said.
Despite the fact that the number of women of childbearing age is expected to fall by 5 million a year from 2016 to 2020, the commission estimates that the newborn population during the period will range between 17 million to 20 million.
Facing an upcoming second-child boom, Yuan Xin, a professor on demography with Nankai University, called for measures to improve services, such as setting up breastfeeding rooms in public places.
According to the commission, Guangdong, Shandong, Henan and Hebei provinces saw the most newborns. A total of 6.23 million new babies were born in the four provinces, accounting for nearly 34 percent of the country’s whole newborn population.
China has promised to provide 89,000 more maternity beds as well as 140,000 more obstetricians and midwives by 2020.
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