China, in the province of Sichuan you can have children without limits and out of wedlock

In 2022, the population in China declined for the first time in 60 years. Not a sudden or unexpected drop, but a worrying decrease and for which countermeasures have been put in place. Not particularly effective so far. For decades, the country has adopted the one-child policy, since 2021, the number of children nationwide for married couples has been increased to three. now in Sichuana province of 80 million people in the south-west of the country, has gone further: no limit to offspring and also for unmarried people while until now there was a ban on single women registering a birth, according to reports from the BBC.

The changes that began in 2016 have failed to halt the decline in the birth rate. Deaths exceeded births for the first time last year in China, also due to Covid although there is no official death data. For Chinese President Xi Jinping, increasing birth rates is a priority. The government has offered tax breaks and better health care to mothers to reverse the trend or at least slow the decline in births.

China’s fear is of reaching a situation like that of Japan which risks the lack of generational turnover and, according to its prime minister, the risk of the impossibility of functioning as a company. If Beijing, in the 1970s, feared that too much population and such a high growth rate would slow down economic growth, now it is the aging of the population that causes fears for the economy.

Alexander Rosinafull professor of Demography and Social Statistics in the Faculty of Economics of the Catholic University of Milan, explained in an interview with Vanity Fair: «At the time, China exceeded one billion people, with the under 25s making up 55% of the population and the over 65s not reaching 5%. This choice slowed down growth, stopping it at one and a half billion. It has served from the point of view of overall growth, but has led to aging and an internal imbalance for ages: the under 25s are halved and the over 65s exceed them».

Few young people and many elderly people is the problem that Italy also has without having applied the Chinese policy. “You have obtained a reduction in the birth rate, far below two children per woman who maintains the balance between generations, not putting in place policies to support families,” explained Rosina. “It is not enough to say: ‘You can have children’. Support measures are needed especially in large cities where expectations and lifestyles are similar to those of the Western world. On this she is still unguarded.’

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