The two million Beijing residents, who are products of single
child families, are expected to cause a major baby boom by the end
of the decade as they are entitled to have two children.
More than a third of the young couples who were both raised as
single children say they will exercise their right to have two
babies, causing birth rates in the capital to almost double by
2010, according to a survey by the Beijing Population Research
Institute.
Government statistics show that about 78,000 babies are born
each year in Beijing. The research institute says there could be
140,000 newborns in 2010.
The survey, recently released at the Capital Population
Development Forum, asked more than 1,300 of Beijing's couples aged
between 20 and 34, who were reared as only children, about their
plans of having babies.
The new government policy is that when a single child marries
another single child, the couple is entitled to have two
children.
Almost 36 percent of the survey respondents said they want two
children. The figure rises significantly from a similar survey four
years ago when 19.5 percent said they were planning to have two
babies.
Nearly 60 percent of those entitled to have two kids said they
would have only one or no children at all.
Beijing has more than two million registered only children.
Wang Guangzhou, a research fellow with the Institute of
Population and Labor Economics under the Chinese Academy of Social
Sciences, who conducted the survey, said the country's "another
baby" policy will cause a peak in birth rates five year earlier
than expected. Pervious estimates suggested the baby boom would
happen in 2015.
Formulated in the early 1970s, China's family planning policy
encourages late marriage, late childbearing and one-child
families.
Statistics also show that China's population would be 400
million higher than it is now if the one-child family policy had
not been put in place.
China officially announced its population reached 1.3 billion in
January 2005.
(Xinhua News Agency December 18, 2006)
