Beijing has announced that all childbirth deliveries in hospitals will become free in 2026. This is the latest move in an ongoing campaign aimed at tackling the declining population.
Since the one child policy was abolished around ten years ago, the Chinese leadership has struggled to get people to have children, but the birthrate has continued to persistently decline.
One big factor in this is the financial burden that raising a family has on many households. A declining population has a significant knock-on effect on the entire economy. A growing population is a good basis for a strong economy, as human beings consume, while robots don’t.