China will for the first time allow couples to have a third child, the country’s government said on Monday, in a further relaxation of family planning rules five years after a “two-child policy” largely failed to boost birth rates. The change comes less than three weeks after the release of China’s once-in-a-decade population census that painted an alarming picture of declining births. “Maybe it’s because the real population data is too scary,” Yi Fuxian, a demographer, told the South China Morning Post (SCMP). That number was down to 894 million in this census and would drop to 700 million by 2050. China introduced a “two child policy” in 2016, but the wide consensus is that it failed to have the desired impact.

Source: The Hindu May 31, 2021 07:18 UTC