Family planning policy eased
Print Edition
China will loosen its family planning rules that limit many couples to a single child in the first substantial change to the policy in more than three decades, as leaders seek to address a rapidly aging population.
According to a key policy document issued yesterday by the Party, couples will be allowed to have two children if one of the parents is an only child — widening the exceptions to a rule introduced in the late 1970s to control China’s population, the world’s largest.
Previously, both parents had to be an only child to qualify for this exemption. Rural couples are allowed two children if their first-born child is a girl, an exemption made in 1984 that was the last substantive change to the family planning policy.
“The birth policy will be adjusted and improved step by step to promote long-term balanced development of the population in China,” the Party document said.
Demographers argue that the one-child policy has created an aging crisis by limiting the size of the young labor pool that must support the large baby boom generation as it retires.
Census officials warned earlier this year that China’s working-age population had begun to shrink for the first time in recent decades, falling by about 3.45 million to 937 million in 2012.
The Chinese government credits the one-child policy with preventing hundreds of millions of births and helping lift countless families out of poverty. But the strict limits have led to forced abortions and sterilizations by local officials, even though such measures are illegal. Couples who flout the rules face hefty fines, seizure of their property and loss of their jobs in state-owned firms.
Last year, a government think tank urged China’s leaders to start phasing out the policy and allow two children for every family by 2015, saying the country had paid a “huge political and social cost.”
The China Development Research Foundation said the policy had resulted in social conflict, high administrative costs and led indirectly to a long-term gender imbalance because of illegal abortions of female fetuses and the infanticide of baby girls by parents who cling to a traditional preference for a son.
The policy document does not specify when the family-size change takes effect, but details are expected when government offices roll out implementation plans later.
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