{"id":51207,"date":"2025-07-29T15:54:41","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T19:54:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/world\/china-announces-child-subsidy-programme-as-births-hit-historic-lows\/29\/07\/2025\/"},"modified":"2025-07-29T15:54:41","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T19:54:41","slug":"china-announces-child-subsidy-programme-as-births-hit-historic-lows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/world\/china-announces-child-subsidy-programme-as-births-hit-historic-lows\/29\/07\/2025\/","title":{"rendered":"China announces child subsidy programme as births hit historic lows"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n<\/p>\n<div data-article-body=\"true\">\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Long seen in the West as a byword for the Chinese Communist Party\u2019s heavy-handedness, the one-child policy became a trope for Chinese authoritarianism.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">While the policy was officially scrapped in 2015 after years of looser enforcement, China now faces unprecedentedly low birth rates \u2014 and has announced it will begin offering childcare subsidies for the first, second and third child up to the age of three, starting this year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Under the plan, families will receive what the government calls a \u2018fertility bonus\u2019 of 3,600 yuan or just over \u20ac430 per child until the age of three.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">While the national government will pay this \u201cbase\u201d amount, local authorities are free to top it up depending on their own resources. The CCP said the nationwide rollout of cash subsidies will help ease the pressure of childcare expenses and will help to prevent a further decline in the fertility rate.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Crucially, the subsidies will be tax-exempt and excluded from calculations of household or individual income, ensuring they do not affect eligibility for minimum living allowances or extreme poverty assistance.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\"><b class=\"c-widget-related__title__text\">Related<\/b><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"mb-4 text-xl font-bold md:text-2xl\">Why now?<\/h2>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">In 2024, China\u2019s total fertility (TFR) rate \u2014 the average number of children a woman is expected to have over her lifetime according to current patterns \u2014 was around 1.15 children per woman. That&#8217;s among the world\u2019s lowest and below the so-called \u201creplacement level\u201d of 2.1, meaning the baseline for the population size to stay the same.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Demographers use these rates to measure whether a population is shrinking, growing or staying the same. The goal of the new policy would not be to expand the population, but to keep it at a relatively similar size without seeing it skew too heavily towards an ageing population. The latter is a problem faced by many European economies.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">According to the World Health Organization, by 2040, around 28% of China\u2019s population will be over the age of 60, threatening to disrupt what used to be a growing labour force and competitive wages. This also skews the dependency ratio, with funds in the economy going to supporting elderly relatives, increased healthcare costs and pensions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">In 2022, China\u2019s population shrank for the first time since 1961, marking a yearly drop of 850,000 people as deaths outnumbered births. In 2023, the worst year on record, the population fell by approximately 2.08 million, and the decline continued in 2024 \u2014 improving only slightly \u2014 as it fell by 1.39mn.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"relative mb-4\">\n<div class=\"relative\"><button aria-label=\"View larger image\" class=\"group absolute bottom-3 right-3 size-10 md:size-[50px] lg:inset-0 lg:size-full lg:bg-transparent\" data-ylk=\"elm:expand;itc:1;sec:image-lightbox;slk:lightbox-open;\"><span class=\"absolute bottom-0 right-0 rounded-full bg-white p-3 opacity-100 shadow-elevation-3 transition-opacity duration-300 group-hover:block group-hover:opacity-100 md:p-[17px] lg:bottom-6 lg:right-6 lg:bg-white\/90 lg:p-5 lg:opacity-0 lg:shadow-none\"><svg viewbox=\"0 0 22 22\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"size-4 lg:size-6\" width=\"22\" height=\"22\"><path d=\"M12.372.92c0-.506.41-.916.915-.916L21 0l-.004 7.712a.917.917 0 0 1-1.832 0V3.183l-6.827 6.828-1.349-1.348 6.828-6.828h-4.529a.915.915 0 0 1-.915-.915M1.835 17.816l6.828-6.828 1.349 1.349-6.829 6.827h4.529a.915.915 0 0 1 0 1.831L0 21l.004-7.713a.916.916 0 0 1 1.831 0z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/button><dialog aria-label=\"Modal Dialog\" aria-modal=\"true\" class=\"fixed inset-0 z-4 size-full max-h-none max-w-none bg-white hidden\"\/><\/div><figcaption class=\"relative text-sm mt-1 pr-2.5\">\n<p><span class=\"wdgt-image_capText\"> Shenzhen is often called the \u201cmiracle city\u201d of China because it embodies the country\u2019s transition from a closed, planned economy to a global powerhouse. <\/span> <span class=\"wdgt-image_credit\"> &#8211; Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2 class=\"mb-4 text-xl font-bold md:text-2xl\">Chinese growth miracle is reversed<\/h2>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">In 1978, China went through political and economic reforms, including opening up parts of its economy to combat rural poverty and absorbing hundreds of millions of workers into its labour force. It is widely considered one of the fastest economic transformations in history, with China becoming the biggest net exporter in the world and its economy growing an average of about 9.5% per year until 2018.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Of course, the economic clout came with political and diplomatic power. Now, the population decline could lead to China falling on the wrong side of the demographic dividend as its pool of available labour shrinks.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"mb-4 text-xl font-bold md:text-2xl\">Ultra-low fertility economies<\/h2>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">China is not the only Asian country to suffer from this problem and its effects on the economy. Several Asian countries are now considered ultra-low fertility economies, where population decline has become very steep and hard to reverse \u2014 even with pro-natalist policies like the child subsidy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">A mix of economic, cultural and demographic dynamics may reinforce a cycle of fewer births in these countries. Economically, this erodes the very demographic dividend that once fuelled the explosive growth of East Asia\u2019s richest countries.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/news\/articles\/china-announces-child-subsidy-program-155356901.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Long seen in the West as a byword for the Chinese Communist Party&rsquo;s heavy-handedness, the one-child policy became a trope for Chinese<br \/><button class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/world\/china-announces-child-subsidy-programme-as-births-hit-historic-lows\/29\/07\/2025\/\">Read More &rsaquo;<\/a><\/button><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51208,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/media.zenfs.com\/en\/euronews_us_articles_576\/9333a278fff9f2bb572d40f09403ac03","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51207"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}