China relaxed it’s one-child policy:Current Affairs Special Series

Team Adda247 and BankersAdda are here with a Current Affairs Special Series. In this series, candidates will be introduced to current affairs topics daily, which will not only improve their general awareness but also will ensure that the candidates do not lack in any current affairs topic. Today’s Current Affairs topic is China relaxed its one-child policy.

China relaxed its one-child policy

China announced that it moves to a major shift in its population policy from the older ‘One-Child Policy’ to the ‘Three Child Policy’ to boost the falling Birth Rate. China permitted couples to have up to three children, from the existing limit of two. This decision has been taken after recently held census data which showed a dramatic decline in births in the world’s most populous country.

(Timeline: One-child policy was first introduced in some areas in 1978 by Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. Then it changes in one-child policy to two children many times. Finally in 2016 it allows for two children for a couple.)

The change was approved in a meeting chaired by President Xi Jinping. The decision which was taken in 2016 to relax China’s one-child policy and allow people to have a second child had failed to reverse the country’s falling birth rate as the high cost of raising children in Chinese cities warned many couples from starting families. The policy change will result in “supportive measures, which will be conducive to improving our country’s population structure, fulfilling the country’s strategy of actively coping with an aging population and maintaining the advantage, endowment of human resources. 

China’s once-a-decade census released recently showed that 12 million babies were born in the past year which is the lowest since 1961 during the Great Famine. The census showed China’s 2020 fertility rate at 1.3 children per woman-below the replacement level of 2.1 needed for a stable population putting it on a par with aging societies like Japan and Italy. 

Lack of affordable public childcare, rising living costs, and the grueling hours’ many people must work to survive are the contributing combination to reluctance among millennials to have children. China also gives importance to progressively raise the retirement age.