Amid falling fertility rate, China to certify ‘birth-friendly’ cities and workplaces
Campaign aims to name 40 cities and 200 workplaces as being supportive of childbirth every three years
China has launched a national campaign to certify cities and workplaces as “birth-friendly” to help arrest a historic demographic decline, as a top policy adviser called for even more substantial shifts, including decoupling childbirth from marriage.
In documents released on Thursday, the National Health Commission urged city governments to reduce the financial burdens of childbirth, child-rearing and education on families, and called on employers to support their employees in balancing work and family responsibilities.
The urgency of such reforms was echoed by Ma Jiantang, a senior economist and national political adviser, in a lecture at Tsinghua University in Beijing on Thursday night.
Discussing the nation’s demographic challenges, Ma emphasised the need to act while a critical “window of opportunity” remained open.
“We must seize the period where the number of women at childbearing age is still over 200 million and strive for a recovery in the total fertility rate,” Ma said, basing the number of females aged from 15 to 49 on research by Southwestern University of Finance and Economics and Tsinghua University that was released in January last year.
While Beijing has not released official fertility rate figures recently, United Nations data suggests the average number of children born to each Chinese woman fell to just 1.0 in 2024.