In a major policy shift, China has decided to implement a three-child policy in order to check the declining birth rate in the country. Not only that, the Chinese government will now offer sops to the couples to meet the cost of raising and educating more children, state-run China Daily reported.
China's national legislature on Friday formally accepted the governing Communist Party's proposed three-child policy that aims to prevent a sharp drop in birth rates in the world's most populous country.
The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) passed the revised Population and Family Planning Law, allowing the Chinese couple to have three children.
The NPC has changed the law to execute the central leadership's determination to deal with new social and economic circumstances and encourage long-term population growth that is balanced, said the PTI report.
To address the complaints, the new law included greater social and economic support measures.
The new law states that the country will implement supportive measures, such as those in finance, taxation, insurance, education, housing, and employment, to ease the pressures on families and lower the cost of raising and educating children.
The decision to allow the third child comes as China's population rose at the slowest rate in a decade, reaching 1.412 billion people, with official projections indicating the decline might start as early as next year.
Earlier this year, the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) authorized a relaxation of the country's rigorous two-child policy, allowing all couples to have up to three children.
Repealing the country's decades-old restrictive one-child policy in 2016, which experts blamed for the country's demographic catastrophe, China permitted the couples to have two children.
According to new census data, China's demographic crisis is anticipated to worsen, as the population of persons aged 60 and older increased by 18.7% last year to 264 million.
