SHANGHAI/BEIJING, (Reuters) – The easing of family planning restrictions in China to allow all couples to have two children will benefit around 100 million families, a professor told the official China Daily yesterday.
After decades of a strict one-child policy, the ruling Communist Party said on Thursday that China will allow all families the freedom to have two children.
But Lu Jiehu, a sociologist with Peking University, added that it will take time to have an impact.
“Couples born in the 1970s may want to have a second child as they want to ‘catch the last bus,’ but those born in the 1980s and 1990s have no urgent desire to give birth to a second child,’ Lu told the paper.
Beijing loosened the family planning policy in late 2013, allowing couples to have a second child where one partner was an only child, but as of June, only 1.5 million of the 11 million eligible couples applied to expand their family, said the paper.
Yuan Xin, a scientist at Nankai University in Tianjin, told the paper the latest change will have a greater impact on rural families who are more interested than city dwellers in having larger families.
There were no immediate details on the new policy or a time frame for implementation.
