The measure aims to “promote long-term and balanced population development,” the Sichuan health commission said.
Health authorities in southwest China’s Sichuan province will allow singles to start families and benefit from benefits meant for married couples, in another bid to boost birth rates.
The government stipulates that married women are legally allowed to have children, but with marriage and birth rates falling to historic lows in recent years, local authorities revised the legal framework in 2019 to cover singles who they want to have children.
From February 15, married couples and those who want to have children will be allowed to register in China’s fifth most populous province, with no upper limit on the number of children they can register.
The measure aims to “promote long-term and balanced population development,” the Sichuan health commission said in a statement.
Until now, the commission only allowed married couples who wanted to have up to two children to register on local authority registers.
China’s population shrank last year for the first time in six decades, prompting authorities to announce incentives and measures to boost it.
The nationwide system of registering couples in local authority registries ensures maternity insurance to cover medical expenses, while allowing married women to continue receiving their salary during pregnancy and maternity leave.
Those benefits will now be extended to unmarried women and men in Sichuan, which ranks seventh in the country for the number of citizens over the age of 60, or more than 21 percent of its population, according to government data.
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