A communique from the party’s Central Committee said that the decision to allow all couples to have two children was “to improve the balanced development of population” and to deal with an ageing population, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
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“Couples born in the ’80s and ’90s are quite reluctant to have a second child”, Lu said.
Critics say the policy change comes too late and will not have the desired effect.
About 1.45 million couples, or 13 percent of the 11 million eligible, applied for permission to have a second child as of May, according to the National Health and Family Planning Commission.
With a modest rise in the fertility rate to 1.74, Zhou Hao, senior Asia emerging markets economist at Commerzbank AG, said the ratio of people over 65 years old to those aged 15-64 would climb to 43 percent by 2050 from 13 percent this year.
Su Weihua, the mother of an 8-year-old daughter in the southern city of Guangzhou, said she was making plans to become pregnant next year.
But many demographers argue the birthrate would have fallen anyway as China’s economy developed and education levels rose. “Women will still be forcibly aborted under a universal 2-child policy”, she said, calling for continued pressure on China until it completely “abandons all coercive population control”.
The Communist Party’s decision to ease limits on family size makes China a bit less restrictive but is a reminder of the party’s pervasive role in society.
Investors are betting on a bump in sales for companies with baby or child-related businesses after China’s Communist leaders announced that all married couples would be allowed to have two children. Many urban couples are choosing not to have any children at all.
Now, the party leadership has acted more forcefully, apparently in the hope that a burst of children will replenish the nation’s work force and encourage more consumer spending.
Over the years, so many exceptions and amendments were made to China’s one-child policy that it was hard to pinpoint a moment to pronounce it dead.
But Thursday’s announcement that all Chinese couples will be allowed two children is as good a moment as any to write the obituary for this controversial and gratuitously cruel policy: China’s one-child policy died on Thursday, after a long illness. As Ana Swanson points out in The Washington Post, the policy has been so successful that it has led to a demographic crisis that is likely to hit the country in the future in which there is a rapidly growing population of older citizens who, thanks to health innovations, better diet, and, well, the fact that the famines and wars that have traditionally cut down China’s population over the centuries have not happened in a long time, are living longer and a significantly smaller population of younger workers to support them.
To many Chinese of my age who grew up in the cities, the one-child policy was just the way it was, and everyone seemed to be fine with it. (The one-child policy was officially put into place at the end of that decade.) The FT also reported that 403 million intrauterine devices had been inserted in women in that time, often forcefully. The new two child policy is a start, but many believe it will not boost the birth rate enough for the government’s purposes. This is something that we have seen in nations throughout the world and throughout history.
“If we do not let people have a second child, then the population will further decline”.
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The outcasts Many who wanted more than one child, especially those with means, found a way around the official rules, such as by having babies overseas or paying fines to have their children registered with the government. I don’t think this is going to have as big of an impact on China’s economy going forward as a few people may think.
