The potential winners in a possible scrapping of China’s birth limits
From maternity clinics and child care providers to the property market
and education-service providers, the business and economic knock-ons could be huge
Private early education providers, baby-caring companies, family-oriented lifestyle product producers, and children’s wear makers could be the biggest beneficiaries from a possible lifting in China of birth control limits, according to analysts.
China is considering a plan to scrap all limits on the number of children a family can have, which could be implemented as early as end of this year, according to Bloomberg, citing unnamed official sources this week.
The 1.4 billion population country has already started to feel the effects of an acute shortage of younger workers, who have effectively had the biggest influence on its dramatic economic progress over the past 30 years.
Beijing scrapped its long-time, one-child policy in 2015 and now allows couples to have a second baby without a variety of mainly financial penalties being imposed on the family, in a bid to improve its ageing population problem.
The number of new births fell to 17.23 million in 2017, however, from 17.86 million in 2016, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, blamed on affordability of adding another mouth to feed, education and rearing costs to your family, and maybe having to buy a larger property.
At the same time, the labour force – defined as those aged between 16 and 59 – shrank by more than 5 million last year.