BEIJING — China will allow all couples to have two children, a Communist Party leadership meeting decided Thursday, bringing an end to decades of restrictive policies that limited most urban families to one child.
The announcement came after the party's Central Committee concluded a four-day meeting in a heavily guarded hotel in western Beijing where it approved proposals for China's next five-year development plan, which starts next year. The terse announcement from Xinhua, the state news agency, about the sharp shift in family planning policy gave no details.
The Chinese government has already eased some restrictions in what has often been described as the "one-child policy," and a party conference in 2013 approved allowing couples to have two children when one of the spouses was an only child. But many eligible couples failed to take up the chance to have a second child, citing the expense and pressures of raising children in a highly competitive society.
A summary of the decision by Chinese radio news said that officials had decided to "improve the demographic development strategy, and to comprehensively implement a policy that couples can have two children, actively taking steps to counter the aging of the population."
Still, the cost and difficulty of child-rearing are likely to deter many eligible couples from having two children despite the relaxed rules, Mu Guangzong, a professor of demography at Peking University, said in a telephone interview.
"I don't think a lot of parents would act on it because the economic pressure of raising children is very high in China," he said. "The birthrate in China is low and its population is aging quickly, so from the policy point of view, it's a good thing as it will help combat a shortage of labor force in the future. But many parents simply don't have the economic conditions to raise more children."
By May, about 1.45 million couples had applied to have a second child under the relaxed rules announced in late 2013, but that was only about 12 percent of the number eligible, disappointing demographers and policy makers who had hoped that the policy shift would do more to counteract the rapid aging of China's population. Now the party leadership has acted more forcefully, apparently in the hope that a burst of children will replenish the nation's work force and encourage more consumer spending.
The one-child policy took shape in the late 1970s, when Deng Xiaoping and other leaders concluded that China's growing population threatened to stifle economic growth. The restrictions went into effect in cities, but in the countryside, many families continued having two or more children. The government has also excused ethnic minorities from complying.
As the years went on, harsh official campaigns to fine and punish couples who violated the rules, and sometimes to force women to have abortions, became a source of public discontent.