A demographic expert in China has called on the government to pay couples with children “parent salaries” as an incentive to counter the country’s low birth rate.
The proposal came as the authorities in China are struggling to deal with a population slump amid an ageing population and many young Chinese people’s reluctance to have children.
Demographer Huang Wenzheng, a senior fellow of the Beijing-based think tank Center for China & Globalization (CCG), said the low birth rate is rooted in the lack of policies and incentives to encourage people to have children.
“We should regard having children and raising them as a job,” Huang told Jimu News. “People who do normal jobs in material production or service industries have salaries. But regarding giving birth to a child and bringing them up, people only make contributions without any financial benefits. When people find there isn’t much benefit in having children, they will have little interest in doing so.”
