二孩奖励政策 (èrhái jiǎnglì zhèngcè): Two children incentive policies

Liaoning province has recently issued the province's population development plan (2016-30), which proposes introducing more incentives to encourage families that give birth to two children.

The family planning policy was changed in 2016 to allow all couples to have two children. However, many surveys have found that a lot of couples do not intend to have two children, not because they don't want to, but because they cannot afford the economic burden of raising two kids.

To address this problem, many local authorities have introduced incentive policies to encourage more couples to have two children.

And since the family planning policy was changed, 31 provincial-level regions nationwide have revised their local regulations on maternity leave, which enables women that give birth to a second child to enjoy the same maternity leave as women who give birth to their first child. Some regions have even extended the maternity leave.

In Shihezi in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, for instance, the local authorities have introduced five new incentive policies, including two and a half months of pre-natal leave and extended breastfeeding leave, to encourage more women to give birth.

The Tianjin authority has increased the 30-day childbirth allowance to qualified families that give birth to two children, and Xiantao in Hubei province provides 1,200 yuan ($179) as a childbirth subsidy to families that give birth to two children.