沪官员呼吁生二胎

A Shanghai health official has urged qualified couples to have a second baby because only a few had taken advantage of changes the government made a year ago to ease its one-child policy. Only 5 percent of women eligible to have a second child have applied to do so, Fan Hua, an official in Shanghai's health and family planning commission, said on January 25. The high cost of raising a child and women's career pursuits were to blame for the lack of interest in having children, Fan said. The average age for a Shanghai woman to get pregnant is 28, Fan said, and many dropped the idea of having a second child as their careers took off in their early 30s. Qualified couples should have a second child because two children provided a family with the proper stability and social development, Fan said. The ruling Communist Party started easing the one-child policy in 2013, more than three decades after it was implemented. The changes allowed couples in which either parent was an only child to have a second baby. Local governments across the country started implementing the changes last year. Shanghai's call for couples to take advantage of the changes shows the city government is worried about its population, said Huang Wenzheng, a biostatistics expert at Johns Hopkins University, which is aging and shrinking – in 2013 it recorded more deaths than births, and a quarter of its population is over 60. About 1 million couples around the country applied to have second children by the end of 2014, Mao Qun'an, a spokesman for the National Health and Family Planning Commission, said on January 12. The government had predicted the figure would be 2 million every year. Mao said the shortfall may be due to couples taking time to apply. Huang said government data showed that application figures were declining every month, and reversing the trend is impossible. For Caixin Online this is Patrick Williams 单独二胎实施近一年，不仅没有出现“井喷”，反而在各地遇冷，申请人数远少于预期。“经上海市卫计委统计，目前上海进入婚育年龄的女性，有90%都符合双独或单独的政策，但申请二孩的比例还不足5%。” 近日，在上海市政协委员现场咨询会上，上海市卫计委家庭发展处处长樊华公开作出上述表示。 为什么上海市民生育二孩的意愿如此低？樊华分析，养育孩子的成本高是原因；另外，也与女性追求事业发展有关。社会竞争激烈，上海女性初育的平均年龄是28岁，若以生育二孩间隔三至四年的标准计算，生育二孩时，女性平均年龄已是32岁左右，正处于事业上升期，因此不太愿意为了再生育而影响甚至放弃事业。 上海市卫计委官员在咨询现场呼吁，更多符合两孩政策的上海家庭应提出生育申请，因为对于家庭结构的稳定性和社会的发展而言，两个孩子更适宜。 对此，人口专家、约翰霍普金斯大学生物统计学博士黄文政对财新记者表示，上海官方的呼吁“非常正面”，说明上海官方已经意识到了当前低生育率情况的紧迫性。实际上，上海多年来“双独二胎”的实施情况就已经表明，申请人数占符合条件的人数的比例已经相当低了，而申请之后实际进行生育的又仅占一半，“几乎可以忽略不计”。 上海官方的急迫还与当地严重的老龄化和户籍人口的负增长不无干系。根据《2013年上海市国民经济和社会发展统计公报》2013年，上海市全年户籍常住人口出生10.52万人，出生率为7.39‰；死亡11.65万人，死亡率为8.19‰；户籍常住人口自然增长率为-0.8‰，出现户籍人口负增长。 而公布于2014年的《上海市老年人口和老龄事业监测统计调查》显示，截至2013年年底，上海户籍60岁及以上老年人共计387.62万人，占全市1432.34万人户籍人口的27.1%。在人口金字塔中，上海已呈现“倒金字塔”状。上海市老龄科学研究中心副主任殷志刚表示，2013年上海老年人口的增量为有史以来最高，上海已进入深度老龄化阶段，“上海将面临最重的养老压力。” “单独二孩”政策遇冷的不单单是上海，1月12日，国家卫计委新闻发言人毛群安表示，截至2014年底，全国不到100万“单独”夫妇提出再生育申请，远低于此前“200万”的预测。对此，毛群安解释称，因为是2014年才开始实施，不少家庭还在准备阶段，估计2015年会比2014年的数额增加。黄文政则反驳了这种说法，他指出，2014年的数据已经显示出，申请人数是逐月下降的，不可能到2015年又发生逆转。