China's One-Child Policy to Be Abolished to Address Aging Population
China is about to abolish its one-child policy, which has been in place for several decades to address the country's aging population, the Communist Party of China (CPC) announced on Thursday.
After the CPC Central Committee's Fifth Plenary Session ended on Thursday, China has decided to ease its one-child policy in a bid to balance the country's population development. The move will allow Chinese couples to have two children after it gains approval from the top legislature, according to state-run media firm Xinhua.
Scholars had been pushing the Chinese government to drop its one-child policy because they say it is already outdated and is the main cause of the drop in China's labor population. In 2012, the country's working age population has seen a significant drop for the first time in several decades, Reuters reports.
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The CPC's announcement of the family planning policy reform aims to maintain China's population growth between 2016 and 2020. The details of the reform, such as the time frame and process of implementation, are still unavailable as of now, the report relays.
China first implemented the one-child policy in the late 1970s to curb the nation's soaring population. The family planning policy limited urban couples' child to just one and rural couples' to two, if the first one is a girl, the report details.
The one-child policy was later on eased to allow couples to have two children if both are only children. In November 2013, the CPC's key meeting resulted in a decision to further loosen the family planning rule and allow couples to have two children even if only one of them is an only child.
Despite the change in China's one-child policy, there are critics who say the reform came in too late. When the 2013 change was announced, many couples still did not take the bait and decided to maintain just one child because of the high cost of living and bringing up kids in the city.
