China will provide financial support to parents through a new child benefit to counteract the declining birth rate, which has been declining for three consecutive years. China has been struggling for years with the consequences of its decades-long one-child policy.
The Chinese government will provide parents with an annual child allowance of 3,600 yuan per child under the age of three, according to the state news agency Xinhua.
The measure is intended to reverse the trend of declining birth rates in the country. China’s population shrank for the third consecutive year in 2024. According to United Nations projections, China’s population could fall from 1.4 billion to around 800 million by 2100.
China has been struggling for years with the consequences of decades of birth control. From 1979 to 2015, China had a one-child policy in place. Each couple was allowed to have only one child, and having a second child was even punishable by law. The government implemented this policy in response to the population boom that followed World War II.
The one-child policy led not only to a rapid ageing of the population but also to a skewed population structure: many families preferred sons, resulting in millions of girls being born or unregistered. As a result, there are now significantly more men than women in China, further complicating the formation of families.
In 2015, China introduced its two-child policy, and as of 2021, couples are allowed to have three children. This initially led to a small “baby boom,” but the birth rate has been declining again in the last three years, and India has since overtaken China as the world’s most populous country.
