HONG KONG – Family planning authorities in the historic Chinese city of Xian texted residents this week wishing them "sweet love, marriage and childbirth", and to create "good fertility", in a new move to boost the country's flagging birth rate.
Many women cite the high cost of childrearing, difficulty in continuing on their career, gender discrimination and not wanting to get married as key factors for not wanting children. Official rules in China make it hard for single or unmarried women to have children out of wedlock but some provinces like Sichuan in the southwest have started liberalising laws in the past year to boost fertility levels.
The population stood at around 1.41 billion at the end of 2022, National Bureau of Statistics reported, a decrease of 850,000 from the end of the previous year – number births 9.56 million and number of deaths 10.41 million. But that has failed to reverse the demographic decline amid soaring cost of living as well as a growing number of women in the workforce and seeking higher education.