Several local Chinese authorities have reported a slight increase in births during the first half of 2024, with some experiencing their first bumps in birth rate in eight years.

The rises are being attributed to a mix of factors, including a small jump in the number of couples getting married last year, the desire of some couples to have a baby during the Year of the Dragon, and the introduction of new pro-natal policy incentives in many parts of China.

However, this early data is unlikely to signal a longer-term rebound in China’s birth rate, experts cautioned.

Most local authorities have yet to release their population figures for the first half of 2024. But of the seven sets of municipal figures Sixth Tone was able to access, six showed an increase in local births compared with the same period in 2023.

Tianmen in central China’s Hubei province reported an 11.3% year-over-year increase in births up to Aug. 14, suggesting that the city is on track to break eight years of consecutive decline in its birth rate.

Baoji in northwestern China’s Shaanxi province recorded a 10.7% year-over-year increase in newborns in the first half of 2024, though this data only included five local hospitals and maternity facilities. Other cities including Qingdao in eastern China’s Shandong province and Alxa League in the northern Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region also reported single-figure increases in births.

The southern Guangdong province also reported a 1.4% year-over-year increase in the number of recorded births at local hospitals in the first half of the year.

Local officials were quick to attribute these increases to policy incentives they had introduced to encourage couples to have more children. Tianmen, for example, recently implemented new subsidies for couples having their second or third child worth 96,000 yuan ($13,500) and 165,000 yuan, respectively. Families with a third child can receive a monthly subsidy of 1,000 yuan for three consecutive years, a 3,000-yuan award for the new birth and significant amount of subsidies for the maternity leave and new home purchases.

“The full effect of these incentives has not yet been realized,” a representative from the city’s health commission told domestic media. “We expect to see a small peak in births by the end of this year or early next year.”

In recent years, China has implemented a series of pro-natal policies in an attempt to reverse the country’s falling birth rate. In 2023, China recorded only 9.02 million births, the lowest total since records began in 1949. The country’s population shrank for the second year in a row as a result.

Local authorities are experimenting with a range of measures to encourage births. These include cash subsidies, tax reductions, and preferential access to housing for couples who have children, as well as steps to promote reductive technologies. But it’s still unclear to what extent these policies are having an effect.

Du Weiping, executive vice president of Qingdao’s family planning association, noted that much of the increase in local births this year is likely to be caused by the fact that 2024 is the Year of the Dragon, with some families wishing to give birth to a “dragon baby.” He predicted that the city’s birth rate was likely to remain low in the coming years.

The local statistics bureau in Baoji, meanwhile, said that local surveys indicated that many young people were hesitant to marry or have children in the previous years due to COVID-19. As life has been back on track, more births were recorded in the first half of this year.

In 2023, the number of marriages registered in China reached 7.68 million, a 12.4% year-over-year increase. That was the first time the marriage rate had increased in a decade.

Ren Yuan, a professor of demography at Fudan University’s School of Social Development and Public Policy in Shanghai, told Sixth Tone that the recent increase in births is largely a result of last year’s rise in marriages. But this post-pandemic rebound is unlikely to last.

“Although there may be occasional fluctuations, the long-term trend of low fertility rates and a sustained decline in birth numbers is essentially inevitable,” Ren said.

In some parts of China, the birth rate continued to decline in 2024. Nanning, the capital of southwest China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, reported a 16.8% year-over-year decrease in births recorded at local hospitals and maternity institutions in the first half of 2024.

China’s marriage rate, meanwhile, appears to have gone into reverse once again. In the first half of 2024, the country registered 3.43 million marriages, a 12.7% drop compared with the same period last year.

Dong Yuzheng, a population expert and researcher at the Guangdong Provincial Government Counsellors’ Office, said that the government would need to go further in its pro-birth policies to turn falling birth rates around.

The key challenge is to significantly reduce the financial and caregiving burdens on parents of young children, Dong said.

(Header image: VCG)