China’s two child policy should see population peak in 2029 at 1.45 billion

Chinese family-planning authorities predict that an extra three million babies will be born annually in the next five years, pushing the annual number of births to 21 million.

On January 1, 2016, the Chinese central government launched the so-called ‘universal two-child policy’ as a way to tackle the country’s aging population.

This means, all Chinese families who wish to have a second child no longer have to worry about hefty fines, mandatory sterilisations and barbaric forced abortions.

Calculated on a basis of an annual spending of 16,000 yuan for each newborn, a yearly increase of up to 50 billion yuan, or more than 7 billion US dollars, is expected in consumption for infants in China.

China’s population, which stood at 1.36 billion last year, would hit a high of 1.45 billion in 2029 [under the two child policy], said Wang Peian, vice-minister of the National Health and Family Planning Commission.

Prior to the introduction of the two-child policy, more than 38 per cent of the population were expected to be older than 60 by 2050. Beijing hoped the two-child policy could reduce this by two percentage points, Wang said. He added that the labour force would increase by 30 million by 2050.

The two-child policy would boost economic growth by 0.5 of a percentage point, a study by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences estimated.

Wang said that the new policy had already provided a boost to the maternity industry, which had been performing well in the stock market recently.

After reaching 1.45 billion the population would drop back to 1.38 billion in 2050, Wang said, but the pressure of overpopulation would remain.

Unmarried chinese women go overseas to freeze their eggs

China prohibits fertility treatments for unmarried women, so chinese women are going overseas to freeze their eggs. A growing number of single Chinese women going abroad to have their eggs frozen as a way to preserve an option and control the pace of their lives.

There has been about a 10 to 15 percent annual increase in demand for egg freezing services in the U.S. in the last three years

From 2009 to 2014, the number of egg-freezing cycles in the United States rose from 568 to 6,165. For this same five-year period, however, the live birthrate from thawed eggs was just below 24 percent

SOURCES – China daily, Daily Mail UK, NY Times