Is China's fourth baby boom coming?
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E-mail CRI, October 15, 2015
In late 2013, China issued a "two-child policy", allowing couples to have two children if one of them is an only child. The new policy updated the country's decades-long one-child population policy. Many people believe the new policy will bring about a new round of baby boom and consider it as a business opportunity.
It is generally thought that China has experienced three baby booms since 1945.
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| File photo of a nurse caring newborns in a hospital in Lanzhou, northwest China's Gansu Province. [Photo: Xinhua] |
The first population boom came in the 1950s, with the number of annual births exceeding 10 million for the first time since 1945. In 1957, the number of births reached a high of 21 million.
The second baby boom occurred from 1962 to 1976, with the number of births per year drifting around 20 million.
The third one was from 1986 to 1990, peaking in 1990 with 26 million births.
Some are wondering if China's fourth baby boom is really approaching.
"In accordance with the law of population changes, a little peak in birth population should have come, but based on the data of the last decades, there is no obvious baby boom to come, " said Wang Guangzhou with the Population and Labor Economics Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
According to statistics, China's annual births have not exceeded 18 million since 1992. In the last decade, figures have lingered around 15.5 million.
China began to implement the "two-child policy" in 2014. Some people feared a surge of new births; however, the increase in number of births in 2014 surpassed 2013's figure only by 470,000. According to statistics from the National Health and Family Planning Commission. By the end of May, only 1.45 million out of the 11 million couples in China who are eligible for a second child have applied to do so.
Li Jianxin with Sociology Institute of Peking University believes that a baby boom will not occur.
"Currently the main force for procreation is people who were born in the 1980s and 1990s. Those people have just entered society and cannot afford the high costs associated with raising another baby," said Li.
After the "two-child policy" met with a cool response, some are calling for even more relaxed birth policies in China. They think that babies are not only consumers for milk and toys but will also contribute to the workforce in the future. From this perspective, China's fourth baby boom is a matter concerning national prosperity and sustainable development.
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