On November 23, Cai Fang, Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), published an article calling for China to reform its fertility policy to allow families to “have their own children.
The article was published in the Beijing Daily, a local official Chinese newspaper. During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, China’s population growth rate will decline year by year, and the population peak may come early and turn negative.
The article emphasizes that China’s fertility rate is not only lower than the global average of 2.41, but also lower than the 1.6 of high-income countries, and that it is difficult for China’s overall fertility rate to return to the population replacement level of 2.1.
Cai Fang suggests that the fertility policy should be optimized to allow families to “self-reproduce” in order to slow down the declining population growth rate. He emphasizes that this policy should have a high priority in the 14th Five-Year Plan, and should be integrated with the pension model and retirement system.
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