China’s population grows by less than half-a-million in 2021; birth rate falls for 5th consecutive year

Chinese provinces have started announcing a slew of supportive measures to motivate couples to have three children to prevent a steep decline in birth rates.

Beijing, Sichuan and Jiangxi provinces have rolled out supportive measures such as increased parental leave, maternity leave, marriage leave and paternity leave, state-run Xinhua news agency reported earlier.

China permitted all couples to have two children in 2016, scrapping the draconian decades-old one-child policy which policymakers blame for the current demographic crisis.

Last year China passed a revised Population and Family Planning Law allowing Chinese couples to have three children in an apparent attempt to address the reluctance of couples to have more kids due to mounting costs.

The decision to permit the third child came after the once-in-a-decade census in 2020 showed that China’s population grew at its slowest pace to 1.412 billion.

The census figures revealed that the demographic crisis China faced was expected to deepen as the population above 60 years grew to 264 million up by 18.7 per cent.