Chinese couples might be paid to have more children, report says

Chinese health authorities are studying the possibility of financial incentives to encourage child birth, local media reported, after decades of population controls left the country with a shrinking workforce.

The National Health Commission has organised experts to explore using tax breaks and other benefits to reduce the cost of having children, news portal Thepaper.cn reported on Wednesday.

The study will assess the effects of rewarding families based on the number of children they have, the report said, without saying where it got the information.

The research is the latest sign that Chinese policymakers believe more dramatic action is needed to defuse a demographic time bomb almost three years after allowing all families to have two children instead of one. Bloomberg News reported in May that China was planning to scrap all limits on the number of children a family can have to reduce the pace of ageing in the country and remove a source of international criticism.