Govt again eases 2nd child rules

Shanghai's health and family planning officials said at a press conference Tuesday that they are confident the local healthcare system can handle the increased demand for obstetric services now that the municipal government has signed off on looser family planning restrictions.

Starting next month, married couples in Shanghai will be allowed to have a second child as long as at least one spouse is an only child, according to the new family planning policy that the standing committee of the Shanghai Municipal People's Congress approved Tuesday morning. The new policy also requires at least one spouse to have Shanghai residency.

Officials estimated that the new policy will cause 20,000 to 30,000 additional babies to be born in the city each year.

At most, the policy will increase the number of newborns by 50,000 each year, and the city has the healthcare and education resources to handle them, said Zhang Meixing, a senior official with the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Health and Family Planning.

A family planning official said that about 200,000 babies are born in the city each year, though half of them are born to couples who don't have Shanghai residency, the Xinmin Evening News reported earlier.

Couples without Shanghai residency must apply to authorities in their home regions if they want a second child.

Zhang told the Global Times that the government will still require couples to apply for a permit to have a second child, though it won't impose restrictions on a mother's age or the number of permits issued each year.

Such limits, which have been imposed in other cities in China, won't be necessary in Shanghai due to the municipality's already depressed fertility rate, said Huang Hong, vice director of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Health and Family Planning.

According to the Shanghai Municipal Statistics Bureau, the total fertility rate of women with Shanghai residency was 0.8 in 2011, which indicates that local women are not having enough children to maintain the population.

About 370,000 couples will qualify to have a second child under the new policy, Zhang said. Based on the results of an annual fertility survey, no more than 150,000 second children will be born in the city.

However, there is evidence suggesting that many of the couples who say they want a second child still might not go through with it. There are about 2 million couples who qualify to have a second child under the city's current family planning policy. About 40 percent of those couples said they wanted a second child, yet only 10 percent applied for a permit, and only 7,000 couples actually had a second child over the last five years, according to the health authority.