beyondbrics

China’s one-child policy has attracted damning headlines for decades in the West, but in China it has some surprising supporters: only children who are now thinking about having babies themselves.

According to the official Shanghai Daily, more than half of those who would be allowed to have a second child in Chinese cities – including those who are themselves only children – do not plan to have two. The Shanghai Daily report says Chinese couples are also delaying having children by an average 2.1 years, citing the cost of raising children and the high price of housing.

The survey quoted by Shanghai Daily, done by Beijing-based Horizon Research Consultancy, found two-thirds of respondents in cities said they must first have a home before starting a family – no small feat in an era when house prices put a starter flat out of reach of many moderate-income young people.

For more than a decade, Shanghai has allowed couples to have two children if each parent is an only child, but few have done so as rapidly rising incomes in the country’s financial capital have been accompanied by falling birth rates.

So last year family planning officials starting nudging eligible parents harder, with plans to push leaflets under doors and make home visits to promote procreation.

“We encourage eligible couples to have two kids because it can help reduce the proportion of elderly people,” said Xie Lingli, director of the Shanghai Population and Family Planning Commission in a statement. But online surveys show many Shanghainese think multiple children are not only too costly, but too much trouble to raise – proof, if any were needed, of just how deeply the one-child policy is now engrained in Chinese society.