Cash reward for one-child families
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Families in Yunnan Province are being enticed with a 1,000- yuan ($149) cash reward to abandon plans to have a second child even when they are legally allowed to do so, according to a family planning policy rule announced Wednesday.
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The family planning policy has long been wrongly perceived as one-child policy. Its main contents are: Advocating delayed marriage and delayed child bearing, fewer and healthier births; and advocating one child for one couple. Some rural couples and ethnic minorities are allowed to give birth to a second child. |
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Special report: |
Yunnan-based Metropolis Times reported Thursday that the policy was approved during a hearing in Kunming, the provincial capital, attended by family planning officials, local people's congress deputies and lawyers.
Generally, parents are eligible to have another child if they meet certain conditions, but if they give up the right, they could get 1,000 yuan, the report said.
Many rural residents including farmers are presently allowed to have a second child.
"The award is based on the national policy. And we proposed the regulation last year," an official from the policy and regulation office of the Kunming Population and Family Planning Committee, who declined to be named, told the Global Times Thursday.
Authorities in other provinces and autonomous regions, including Inner Mongolia, Hebei, Anhui, Hubei and Shaanxi, have also implemented similar measures to control the population size.
In Shaanxi, rural families who gave up having a second child have received a bonus of 4,000 yuan ($598) starting in 2007. The award reached 5,000 ($747) in Jiaozuo, Henan Province.
However, some parents said the reward would hardly change their mind about not having a second child.
