China shifts from a two-child to a three-child policy

The Chinese government has passed a legal amendment that allows married couples to have a third child.

President Xi Jinping approved this decision at a meeting of top Communist Party officials.

‘Supportive measures, which will be conducive to improving our country’s population structure, fulfilling the country’s strategy of actively coping with an ageing population and maintaining the advantage, endowment of human resources’. according to Xinhua news agency.

China has been implementing the one child policy since 1980, as a temporary measure to put a brake on China’s population growth and to facilitate economic growth under a planned economy that faced severe shortages of capital, natural resources, and consumer goods.

On January 2016 the Chinese government announced that all Chinese couples are allowed to have two children.

The decision to allow the birth of the third child came after a census conducted every ten years showed that population growth in China experienced a significant decline.

This census put pressure on the government to put in place measures that would encourage couples to have more children, in an attempt to avoid a population decline.

The census conducted in China earlier this month showed that last year about 12 million children were born, compared to 18 million in 2016.

This amendment eliminates a set of measures previously adopted by the Chinese government, including imposing fines on spouses who violate the law by having more children than the permissible number.