One-child parents get more support
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E-mail China Daily, August 9, 2012
Starting in 2011, the provincial government began to give out a monthly subsidy of 106 yuan to all retired parents in urban areas who had just one child.
"After handing in our single-child certificate, my wife and I began to receive the subsidy from our work units,' Ni said. "We don't count on the money but it might be of great help to some people who are struggling and they deserve that.''
Lu said the initiative was "another major breakthrough after the government began to give financial support in 2003 for parents older than 55 in rural areas who followed the family planning policy''.
Rural areas traditionally had little in terms of social welfare and insurance and people tended to rely on children to look after them in their old age, according to Lu.
Yuan Xin, a professor at Nankai University's population and development institute in Tianjin, expressed optimism that the program will expand.
"More government policies and measures favorable for all single-child families, regardless of their residence, will be introduced,' he said.
Li Bin, former head of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, said previously that those who put the country's interest first, in answering the government's call to have only one child, should be taken care of and rewarded.
"But we have to consider the economic situation as well,' she said.
China's family planning law, issued in 2001, recognized such policies. Apart from the decades-old policy to give a single-child subsidy, 5 yuan a month, which ends when the child reached 14, other policies have been gradually introduced, according to Yuan.
Lu, however, urged policymakers to adjust the sum to reflect present-day reality.
A special subsidy was introduced in 2007 for single-child parents whose children died or suffered disability through birth or accident.
Last year, the commission and the Ministry of Finance jointly issued an official document which touched upon subsidies for elderly single-child parents in urban areas.
"That needs to be further strengthened and institutionalized as a supplement to the family planning policy,' Lu urged.
"It also matters a lot to social stability,' he stressed.
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