Monitoring Desk
BEIJING: China’s southwest Sichuan province is going to lift its three-child birth limit policy and remove restrictions on single parents as the world’s most populous country faces a looming demographic crisis.
China’s population declined in 2022 for the first time in more than 60 years, official data showed. The countryof 1.4 billion has seen birth rates decline to record lows as its workforce ages.
China ended its strict “one-child policy” imposed in the 1980s out of fears of overpopulation, in 2016 and began allowing couples to have three children in 2021. But th decision failed to reverse the demographic decline.
China faced with falling birth rates
Faced with falling birth rates, the authorities in Sichuan said on Monday that they would scrap the limit on the number of children a family can have and scrap a ban on single women registering a birth. The Sichuan Provincial Health Commission has said the new rules would take effect from February 15.
The last time China’s population declined was 62 years ago in 1960.
China’s population stood at around 1,411,750,000 at the end of 2022, according to Beijing’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reports, a decrease of 850,000 from the end of the previous year.
Many believe the soaring cost of living as well as a growing number of women in the workforce and seeking higher education being behind the slowdown. Many local authorities have already launched steps to encourage couples to have children.
