China: No Child Left Behind?

Friday, February 29, 2008

With a population that is getting older, and economists warning that soon there may be too many older citizens and not enough younger workers who can support them - China may be relaxing their one-child policy. From the IHT:

China is studying how to move away from its controversial one-child policy, but any changes would come gradually and would not mean an elimination of family-planning policies, a senior official said Thursday [...] Some of the biggest cities, like Shanghai, have tried to make small tweaks in the policy to spur more births. Nationally, the policy now allows urban couples to have two children if both spouses are themselves from one-child families [...] Experts have warned that China is steadily moving toward a demographic crisis with too many old people in need of expensive services and too few young workers paying taxes to meet those bills. China is often regarded as having a limitless pool of young, cheap labor, but the country's biggest manufacturing centers have faced labor shortages in recent years.
Read the full article here.