04-07-2025
China to start paying families to have babies
China will pay families to have children in an attempt to combat the country's declining birth rate.
Xi Jinping's government will give parents 3,600 yuan (£367) a year per child until they are three years old under plans that will come into force this year, according to Bloomberg News.
It comes amid concerns that China will not be able to care for its ageing population unless a baby boom creates a new generation of future workers who can pay taxes. Demographic decline also threatens to be a drag on economic growth.
China's birth rate reached a record low of 6.39 births per 1,000 people in 2023, down from 6.77 births in 2022. That same year, India overtook China to become the world's most populous country.
In 2023, China suffered the largest population decline since 1961, when the Great Famine of the Mao Zedong era claimed millions of lives.
The population fell for a third consecutive year in 2024, with the number of deaths outpacing births.
China is one of the world's most expensive countries to raise a child. A 2023 report by the YuWa Population Research Institute found. The average nationwide cost from birth to 17 was about £59,000, rising to £74,500 to support a child through university.
More than 20 administrations in local provinces across the country have already started offering childcare subsidies.
Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia, also promised in March to provide 'care' for new mothers by giving them a daily cup of free milk.
One-child legacy
Authorities are struggling to boost the birth rate after 35 years of a strictly enforced one-child policy, which was only dropped in 2015.
President Xi said in 2023 that women must establish a 'new trend of family '. He told China's state-run news agency that the country needed to 'actively cultivate a new culture of marriage and childbearing and strengthen guidance on young people's views on marriage, childbirth and family'.
The number of people aged 65 or above makes up more than 14pc of the Chinese population. Without a change in trends, the number of over-60s is the country is forecast to reach 500m by 2050, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. At that point, pensioners would account for nearly 35pc of the population.
China is not the first country to experiment with payments to boost ailing birth rates. Russia's Oryol region began offering cash payments of nearly £1,000 to girls as young as 16 who are more than 12 weeks pregnant in an effort to combat a population slump.
