Faced with concerns over a slowing fertility rate and an ageing population, China has now allowed parents in the country to have three children. This is a major change for a country which till 2016 followed a one child policy. The decision was taken by Chinese President Xi Jinping in a Politburo meeting. Politburo, short for political bureau is a key decision-making body of the Chinese Communist Party.
It may be recalled that China had imposed a one-child policy on its citizens in 1979 “so the rate of population growth may be brought under control as soon as possible.” The policy was changed in 2016, allowing Chinese couples to have two children. However, the cost of living has increased dramatically in Chinese cities, discouraging the parents from having two children.
The move to allow three children could have been triggered by a recent census conducted in the country. The census conducted once every ten years, revealed that China’s population growth in the last decade was the slowest since the 1950s. The fertility rate(average no of children born to a single female) has also dropped to 1.3 which is similar to rapidly ageing countries like Japan and Italy. In comparison, India’s fertility rate was 2.2 as of 2018.
According to the UN population division, a fertility rate of 2.1 is required for each generation to exactly replace itself.
