China announced Monday that it will now allow couples to have three children, further updating the Chines Communist Party’s infamous “one-child policy”
China announced Monday that it will now allow couples to have three children, further updating the Chines Communist Party’s infamous “one-child policy” amid concerns that the country’s declining birth rate has it headed for a population crash. “China said on Monday that it would allow all married couples to have three children, ending a two-child policy that has failed to raise the country’s declining birthrates and avert a demographic crisis,” the New York Times reported. “The announcement by the ruling Communist Party represents an acknowledgment that its limits on reproduction, the world’s toughest, have jeopardized the country’s future,” the outlet continued. “The labor pool is shrinking and the population is graying, threatening the industrial strategy that China has used for decades to emerge from poverty to become an economic powerhouse.” Births in China have fallen in recent years, and the country’s “total fertility rate” stands at just 1.3 children per couple, below the country’s “replacement rate” of 2.1 children per couple.
