China is facing a population crisis in part due to more women choosing to focus on their careers and personal goals, instead of starting a family. The Chinese government abolished its one-child policy in 2016, and scrapped childbirth limits in 2021 — but married couples are still having fewer children.
The proposals to boost the birth rate, made at the annual meeting of China's People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) this month, range from subsidies for families raising their first child, rather than just the second and third, to expanding free public education and improving access to fertility treatments.
Japan's high cost of living, limited space and lack of child care support in cities make it difficult to raise children, meaning fewer couples are having kids.
China's desperate for more babies
China is also rolling out other incentives for people to have babies. For instance, the Chinese city of Hangzhou is giving a $2,900 grant to parents welcoming a third child this year. Some other cities are giving almost 30 days of marriage leave to boost the birth rate.
Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, and Chinese Singaporeans have all had average fertility rates of 1.0-1.1 – the lowest in the world – over the past two decades, despite local authorities' pro-natalist policies. China's efforts to boost its fertility rate face three major challenges.
There have been many consequences to China's one-child policy. The country's fertility rate and birth rate both decreased after 1980; the Chinese government estimated that some 400 million births had been prevented.
Now, because of plummeting birth rates, the government desperately wants women in the country to have more children. Since 2016, the authorities moved swiftly from a one- to two- to three-child policy.
According to the CIA World Factbook, Nigeria has the highest birth rate in the world at 47.28 average annual births per 1,000 people per year.
Fertility rates in Asia
South Korea has the lowest fertility rate globally at 0.9 children per woman, closely followed by Puerto Rico at 1.0 and a trio of Malta, Singapore, and the Chinese Special Administrative Region Hong Kong all at 1.1 children per woman.
In 2020-21, the fertility rate was 1.66 babies per woman, similar to the rate recorded in 2018-19. In 2019-20, the rate had fallen to 1.61 babies per woman. According to the report, the data suggests people “adapted to the uncertainty of the pandemic and quickly caught-up on delayed childbearing plans”.
Marriage and children are more closely linked in South Korea than nearly anywhere else, with just 2.5 percent of children born outside of marriage in 2020, compared with an OECD average of more than 40 percent. For nearly 20 years, the Korean government has tried to encourage more marriages and more babies.
The average Thai family has only 1.3 children while it should have two or more, but many factors are behind the sliding birth rate, such as the modern lifestyle, the choice to remain single, or couples choosing not to have children, according to health experts.
China's 2022 total fertility rate is estimated to be 1.18 children per woman – down substantially from earlier decades and significantly below the “replacement rate” of 2.1 children per woman.
The curves displaying their population trajectories over time have very different shapes. China's population is, in fact, already declining.
For years, the census data in China has recorded a significant imbalance sex ratio toward the male population, meaning there are fewer women than men. This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as the missing women or missing girls of China. In 2021, the male-to-female ratio of China is recorded at 104.61 to 100.
China's fertility rates were already decreasing in the 1970s, and by 1980 the Chinese government formally instituted the controversial one-child policy, legally restricting families from having more than one baby. The policy was intended to further limit China's population growth and help stimulate an economic boom.
With a fertility rate of almost 7 children per woman, Niger is the country with the highest fertility rate in the world followed by Mali.
Population growth could grind to a halt by 2050, before decreasing to as little as 6 billion humans on Earth in 2100, a new analysis of birth trends has revealed.
South Korea has the world's lowest fertility rate, a struggle with lessons for us all. A woman holding her daughter looks at a view of Seoul in 2019. The fertility rate in South Korea, which has the world's lowest rate, hit 0.78 in February.
Families in China can now have as many children as they like without facing fines or other consequences, the Chinese government said late Tuesday. The move followed China's announcement on May 31 that families could now have three children each.
What If A Family In China Had Twins Under The One-Child Policy? That's not a problem. While many stress the one child component of the policy, it's better to understand it as a one birth per family rule. In other words, if a woman gives birth to twins or triplets in one birthing, she won't be penalized in any way.
A two-child policy is a government-imposed limit of two children allowed per family or the payment of government subsidies only to the first two children. A two-child policy has previously been used in several countries including Iran, Singapore, and Vietnam.