To counter a declining birth rate, Thailand has encouraged its citizens to have more babies by offering parents access to childcare and fertility centers
To counter a declining birth rate, Thailand has encouraged its citizens to have more babies by offering parents access to childcare and fertility centers
SHANGHAI (Reuters) -The cost of raising a child in China stands at nearly seven times its per capita GDP, far more than in the United States and Japan, highlighting the challenges facing Chinese policymakers as they try to tackle rapidly declining birth rates, new research showed. Experts warn China's ageing population will put huge pressure on its health and social security system, while a dwindling workforce could also severely limit growth for the world's second largest economy in the coming decades. Although new policies allow families to have as many as three children, China's birth rate dropped to 7.52 births per 1,000 people in 2021, the lowest since the National Bureau of Statistics began recording the data in 1949.
The devastation wrought by the pandemic has also led to an unprecedented situation in which deaths exceeded births in half of all US states in 2020. This decline in the birth-to-death ratio produced the smallest annual percentage population gain in at least a century.
Italy s declining birth rate has reached a new record low with the latest data citing the negative effects of the covid pandemic as a significant factor.