China announces three-child policy, in major policy shift

Beijing – China announced on Monday that each couple would be permitted to have up to three children, a major policy shift from the existing limit of two children after recent data showed a dramatic decline in births in the world’s most populous country.

The change was approved during a Politburo meeting chaired by President Xi Jinping, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

“Allowing every couple to have three children and implementing related support policies will help improve the population’s structure,” Xinhua reported, citing a Politburo meeting held Monday. It wasn’t clear when the move would take effect, although the meeting was to discuss major policy measures to be implemented in the five-year period which started this year, according to Xinhua.

The Politburo also said that China “will prudently lift the retirement age in a phased manner,” according to the report of the meeting. The increase in the age at which people can retire was included in the current five-year plan although there were no details.

China has been gradually reforming its stringent birth policy that limited most families for many years to only having a single child, with a second child allowed since 2016. However, that did little to reverse the declining birthrate and further relaxation of the limits is unlikely to lead to a sustained increase.

Early this month, China’s once-in-a-decade census showed that the population grew at its slowest rate during the last decade since the 1950s, with data showing a fertility rate of 1.3 children per woman for 2020 alone, on par with aging societies like Japan and Italy.

China’s declining birthrate means the population may soon begin shrinking. Bloomberg Economics estimates the slowdown in population growth means the world’s most populous country could peak before 2025.

As in East Asia and Europe, preferences have shifted towards smaller families. A spike in births following the previous relaxation to allow most families to have two children was short-lived, with many parents citing the high costs of housing and education as a limiting factor. There were only 12 million new babies born in China last year, the lowest number since 1961.