China passes revised law allowing couples to have up to 3 children

Amendment approved by top legislative body also includes support measures to encourage people to have bigger families
But demographer says it may not be enough to reverse fertility decline and calls for population control to be scrapped

China's ageing population

Jane Caiin Beijing

Published: 7:30pm, 20 Aug 2021

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China’s top legislative body passed an amendment to the country’s Population and Family Planning Law on Friday, endorsing a major policy shift allowing couples to have up to three children.

The revised law also includes support measures to encourage people to have bigger families, including financial, tax, insurance, education, housing and employment measures.

“This amendment adapts to our country’s demographic changes, responds to people’s major concerns and lays a legal basis for the implementation of the three-child policy,” a lawmaker from the National People’s Congress Standing Committee told state news agency Xinhua.

After ending its decades-old one-child policy in 2016, allowing couples to have two children, Beijing announced in May that it would relax the rules further and let couples have a third child, as it grapples with the challenges of a rapidly ageing population.

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It came after census data released in May showed that the number of new births fell for a fourth consecutive year – 12 million babies were born in 2020, down from 14.65 million the previous year. That was an 18 per cent year-on-year decline in the birth rate and the lowest number of births since the 1960s.

The census data also showed that China’s fertility rate fell to 1.3 children per woman, well below the replacement level of 2.1 needed for a stable population. By comparison, Japan – another rapidly ageing society – had a fertility rate of 1.369 in 2020.

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But many Chinese are reluctant to have more children because of the pressure and costs of raising them. An online survey conducted by Xinhua soon after the policy change was announced in May suggested it could be a hard sell, with 90 per cent of the 31,000 respondents saying they “would not consider” having three children.

Many young Chinese point to issues like a lack of affordable childcare, rising living costs and long working hours as reasons they would think twice about starting a family, or having more than one child.

The revised law attempts to address some of these concerns with the introduction of economic and social support measures, as well as additional health care such as new maternal and perinatal consulting services and improved fertility treatment services. Local governments are also encouraged to introduce extra paid leave for parents who have children aged under three.

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But Huang Wenzheng, a demographer and senior fellow at the Centre for China and Globalisation in Beijing, was not optimistic that the policy change and support measures would be enough.

“The amendment will help … however, its effects will be too limited to reverse the trend of fertility decline,” he said. “The government should scrap population control altogether, instead of taking small steps forward.”

Huang said the measures failed to address the reasons people are reluctant to have bigger families, including income distribution, land and housing policies, which have led to a huge wealth gap.

The demographer is among the voices in China calling for the country to change course. The central bank has recommended birth controls be abandoned to avoid a scenario where China could have a smaller workforce and higher aged care burden than the United States by 2050. Four researchers from the People’s Bank of China made the unusually direct remark in a paper in March, before the latest policy was announced, saying Beijing should not interfere with people’s ability to have children and that it could soon be too late to reverse the economic impact of the declining population.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Policy change endorsed as law allowing couples to have more children passes