Second-child births keep China’s maternity wards busy

BOFIT Viikkokatsaus / BOFIT Weekly Review 2016/43

Late last year, China announced it was abandoning its long-standing one-child policy, replacing it with a new general two-child limit. Official estimates now see a net increase of 3 million births a year over the next five years as a result of the policy change. Even with the change, the population is on track to peak at 1.45 billion in 2029, and thereafter begin to shrink. Many urban maternity clinics now face a rush as families apparently decided as soon as the policy change was announced to go for number two. In Beijing, for instance, some 360,000 babies will be born this year, over 100,000 more than in 2015. Facilities and staff are stretched to the limit, even if more maternity beds have been set up.

Even with numerous exceptions granted since China adopted the one-child policy in the late 1970s, China’s demographics have become distorted. China’s dependency ratio is rising rapidly, with large age cohorts reaching pension age and much smaller cohorts entering the labour force. More boys than girls continue to be born. The imbalance is the world’s most severe, even if it has fallen a bit in recent years. In 2015, 114 boys were born for every 100 girls. Such imbalance could lead to social tensions if young people are unable to find a suitable match.

The one-child policy also affects care of the elderly, a job that has traditionally fallen on the shoulders of the children. A Peking University nationwide survey of 20,000 over-45-year-olds found that over half of China’s elderly already live without the assistance and support of their children. The need for public and private elder care has increased.

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