Retirement Age: Policy Move

retirement age: In 2016, couples were allowed to have a second baby, although that did little to boost the birthrate, according to The Japan Times. In a meeting presided over by President Xi Jinping on Monday, the Communist Party's Politburo agreed to ease the current two-child restriction and also raise the retirement age, in a bid to boost the labor force. Economists and demographers say authorities will need a range of supportive policies on child care and measures to curb high education and housing costs to make it viable for couples to expand their families. ; China has been gradually reforming its stringent birth policy, which for decades limited most families to having only a single child. It is an important policy move, but the three-children policy alone will not lead to a sustained rebound in the fertility rate, said Yuan Xin, a professor at Nankai University in Tianjin. Some government officials, including researchers at China's central bank, have called for birth limits to be abolished entirely. A whole package of services and polices, such as childcare, tax-rebates for parents, housing subsidies and even gender equality, are needed to create a social environment that encourages parents to have more babies. (news.financializer.com). As reported in the news.