The population increase in 2024 is 17% year on year, so how does Hubei Tianmen manage to do it?
Recently, the Ninth People’s Congress of Tianmen City, Hubei Province, held its fifth meeting to listen to and review the government work report presented by Mayor Xiao Min. According to the “Tianmen Release” WeChat official account, the report mentioned that Tianmen has issued an incentive policy to encourage childbirth. The number of births in 2024 increased by 1,050 compared to the previous year, with an increase of 17%.
How did Tianmen achieve this?
According to an earlier report by Hubei Daily Client, since 2024, Tianmen City has introduced seven policies to encourage childbirth through measures such as providing childcare subsidies, waiving pregnancy expenses, guaranteeing maternity leave benefits, strengthening housing security, and offering childcare services. As of November 30, 2024, the number of newborns in Tianmen City was 6,530, an increase of 910 over the same period in 2023, with a year-on-year growth rate of 16%. This is the first increase in birth numbers after eight years of decline.
According to reports from Yangtze Cloud, in 2024, Tianmen市政府把鼓励生育列为全市五项重点工作之一。基于全市16.5万名已婚育龄妇女的生育意愿调查，Tianmen市将《关于鼓励生育的五条政策措施》进一步升级为《关于鼓励生育的七条意见》，进一步细化和加大了鼓励生育的政策支持力度。以生育三个孩子的家庭为例，可以享受基因筛查减免费用、分娩补助、一次性生育奖励、产假补助、育儿补贴以及购房奖励等多项政策优惠。育儿补贴可以发放至孩子三岁，累计金额达3万多元。全部七项政策补贴和优惠叠加在一起，实际最高可达近三十万元。如果是教师、医务人员等双职工家庭，购房补贴还可以额外增加，生育三孩时叠加鼓励生育政策奖补后，实际最高甚至能够拿到近三十万元。
Zhang Ye, the secretary of the Party Leadership Group and director of the Tianmen Health and Family Planning Committee explained that the decision to encourage childbirth in Tianmen was made through extensive and deep investigations. Before introducing the policies, Tianmen targeted five specific groups including teachers, medical personnel, multi-child families, urban farmers, and talent introductions for extensive investigations. Furthermore, Tianmen organized repeated comparative analysis and targeted research to formulate policies. The final policies launched by Tianmen were not single-handedly focused on monetary subsidies for childbirth but rather a comprehensive set of policies aimed at addressing issues such as small housing areas, heavy housing purchase burdens, and concerns about education and healthcare expenses for families with second and third children. The main policies include providing “five ones” services to birth objects (a birth certificate, household registration booklet, a bouquet of flowers, a red envelope, and a purchase voucher without leaving the hospital), offering housing subsidies of 60,000 yuan for second and third children respectively, and providing a range of policies such as birth rewards, childcare subsidies, childcare services, and professional title evaluations for teachers, medical personnel, urban farmers, and talent introductions.
Pengpai News reported that in June 2024, the Party Secretary and Chairman of the Standing Committee of Tianmen City Ji Daoqing presided over a city-wide meeting to encourage childbirth. At the meeting, the Municipal Health Commission reported on the progress of encouraging childbirth work, and various units reported on the implementation of second-child policy promotion and policy publicity.
“Population development is crucial for the overall situation and is a fundamental, long-term, and strategic work,” said Ji Daoqing. He emphasized that as the issue of population aging becomes increasingly severe, encouraging childbirth is imperative and timely. Various departments need to deepen their understanding and further unite in order to recognize the importance and necessity of encouraging childbirth from a political and strategic perspective. It is necessary to seize the “golden period” for childbirth, make good use of various policy resources, and truly implement the work of encouraging childbirth in a meticulous and effective manner.
He also stressed the need to improve the mechanism for encouraging childbirth by clarifying the bottom-line situation, improving the system of supporting fertility policies, strengthening the responsibility for package linkage work, strengthening monitoring to ensure that encouraging fertility measures are implemented in an orderly manner across various departments. This will allow more families to “want to have children, dare to have children, and are willing to have children.” It is necessary to provide comprehensive service guarantees for fertility by establishing a whole-process and all-round service concept that includes prenatal health guidance, post-partum policy fulfillment, and inclusive childcare services. This will actively create favorable conditions for the majority of female employees to bear children and build a convenient and affordable childcare service circle that creates a friendly environment for childbirth. It is also necessary to strengthen publicity and guidance by fully mobilizing all personnel to participate in nationwide coverage activities through effectively integrating media resources to promote and interpret
