China considering financial incentives in bid to increase birth rate

Beijing

CHINA is weighing subsidies for couples who have a second child to help increase the birth rate after authorities scrapped a decades-old one-child policy in 2015, official media reported.

The government is considering measures such as "birth rewards and subsidies" to help encourage more people to have another child, Wang Peian, vice-minister of the National Health and Family Planning Commission, said at a conference on Saturday, according to a report Tuesday by the state-run China Daily.

Such incentives, if adopted, would represent a fundamental shift in the Communist Party's approach to family planning, from limiting births to encouraging the…