China on Monday repealed its two-child policy, allowing couples to have third child amid falling birth rate and aging population.
A major policy shift was announced after a meeting of the Political Bureau of Communist Party of China Central Committee chaired by President Xi Jinping.
According to Xinhua news, the government will support couples that wish to have a third child
“Implementing the policy and its relevant supporting measures will help improve China’s population structure, actively respond to the aging population and preserve the country’s human resource advantages,” the report said.
The East Asian country had imposed the two-child policy in 2015 after it repealed the single-child policy that remained in place for around 40 years. The measures had been taken to control the population.
The permission for the third child comes after the National Bureau of Statistics of China published country’s decennial census earlier this month.
The census revealed that the population grew at its slowest rate (0.53%) during the last decade since the 1950s, to 1.41 billion.
It also showed a fertility rate of just 1.3 children per woman for 2020 alone.
