About one million Chinese couples ask to have second child after easing of one-child policy
About one million Chinese couples ask to have second child after easing of nation's one-child policy, with health officials expecting the change to lead to an extra two million births each year.
About one million Chinese couples have applied for permission to have a second child since China’s decades-old one-child policy was relaxed, the mainland’s health authority said today.
This figure was in line with official expectations after the Chinese government’s decision to ease the restriction in late 2013, Mao Qunan, spokesman for the National Health and Family Planning Commission, said.
Authorities expected the change would lead the extra number of births to peak at two million births each year, Mao said.
The number of additional births would rise this year owing to the natural time delay since the policy had been relaxed.
The one-child policy was introduced in 1979 to help control China’s huge population, but it has led to demographic problems over the past few decades.
The health authority had also been studying the current situation to help improve future healthcare for pregnant women and their babies when China’s population started to boom, Mao said.