China's ruling Communist Party announced Thursday that the country will start allowing all married couples to have two children, abolishing an unpopular policy that has limited many urban families to only one child for more than three decades.
WHEN China eased its one-child policy late last year, investors bet on a surge in demand for everything from pianos to nappies. They, and government officials, foresaw a mini-boom after long-constrained parents were allowed a second go at making babies.
So far, however, it is hard to identify a bedroom productivity burst. About 270,000 couples applied for permission to have second children by the end of May, and 240,000 received it, according to the national family-planning commission. It means China will fall well short of the 1m-2m extra births that Wang Peian, the deputy director of the commission, had predicted.
Changes to China's strict one child policy, which will allow more parents to have a second child, will begin to roll out early next year, the country's family planning commission told official media late on Monday.
The policy change is expected to go into force in some areas of China in the first quarter of 2014, Yang Wenzhuang, a director at the National Health and Family Planning Commission told China's official Xinhua news agency.
Beijing said last month it would allow millions of families to have two children, the most radical relaxation of its strict one-child policy in close to three decades. The move is part of a plan to raise fertility rates and ease the financial burden of China's rapidly ageing population.
