At this year's National People's Congress and the National People's Congress, Zhang Qi, director of the Department of Internal Medicine of Jiaxing First Hospital, put forward some suggestions on optimizing birth support policies on behalf of the National People's Congress. With the increasing aging and declining birthrate in China, he suggested promoting the establishment of a parental leave system for fathers, establishing a hierarchical mechanism for sharing the cost of parental leave, and integrating inclusive childcare into basic public services.
The analysis shows that the number of people aged 60 and above in China reaches 2800 million, the number of births has declined for six consecutive years, and the proportion of the population aged 0-14 is only 1795%。At the same time, the contradiction between women's employment and childbearing is becoming increasingly prominent. According to the 2020 survey on the social status of women in China, the proportion of women participating in economic and social construction has reached 435%, but still face many restrictions and discrimination.
In view of this situation, Zhang Qi put forward suggestions for optimizing fertility support policies. First, he suggested promoting the establishment of a parental leave system for fathers to strengthen parent-child companionship for fathers and reduce the negative impact of childbirth on women's employment. Secondly, he advocated the establishment of a hierarchical parental leave cost sharing mechanism at the national level, so as to reduce the burden of paid parental leave on employers by sharing multiple responsibilities. In addition, he suggested that inclusive childcare should be included in basic public services to alleviate the difficulty and cost of childcare.
In the end, Zhang Qi stressed that the country should actively respond to the aging of the population into the formulation of various public policies, so as to ensure an appropriate fertility level and solve the problem of being willing to have children and having people to support. A series of appropriate fertility support policies will help to cope with the aging and declining birthrate that China is currently facing.