China's southwestern Sichuan province will allow unmarried individuals to legally have children, in the latest effort to boost a falling birth rate after the country's population shrank for the first time in decades.
From Feb. 15, individuals who want children will be allowed to register with health authorities in China's fifth most populous province, according to a statement released on the provincial government's website Monday.
The government said it will remove its previous requirements to let only married couples register their child's birth.
It also scrapped the limit on the number of children people can register for, the statement showed.
Babies born to single parents in China have long struggled to receive social benefits such as medical insurance and education. Many localities, including wealthy southern Guangdong province, have removed the marriage requirement to encourage more people to have children.
China's population declined in 2022 for the first time since the early 1960s, when the country was devastated by famine after Mao Zedong launched his "Great Leap Forward."
The country's population dropped to 1.412 billion last year from 1.413 billion in 2021, according to official data released earlier this month.
The number of births declined to 9.56 million from 10.62 million in 2021, while China's birthrate--the number of births per thousand people--dropped to 6.77 in 2022, compared with 7.52 in 2021.
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
01-30-23 0601ET
