Some Chinese provinces are giving young newlyweds 30 days of paid leave in the hope of encouraging marriage and boosting a flagging birthrate, the state-run People’s Daily Health said on Tuesday.
China’s minimum paid marriage leave is three days, but provinces have been able to set their own more generous allowances starting this month.
The northwestern province of Gansu and coal-producing Shanxi Province now give 30 days, while Shanghai gives 10 and Sichuan Province still only three, the People’s Daily Health said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“Extending marriage leave is one of the effective ways of increasing the fertility rate,” Yang Haiyang (楊海洋), dean of the Social Development Research Institute of Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, was quoted as saying.
“The extension of marriage leave is mainly in some provinces and cities with relatively slow economic development,” he said, adding that there was an urgent need to both expand the labor force and stimulate consumption.
A host of other supporting policies are still needed, including housing subsidies and paid paternity leave for men, he said.
China’s population fell last year for the first time in six decades, official data showed — a turning point that is expected to mark the start of a long period of decline.
Last year, China recorded its lowest ever birthrate, of 6.77 births per 1,000 people.
Much of the downturn is the result of a “one child” policy imposed from 1980 to 2015, and a surge in education costs that has put many Chinese off having more than one child, or even having any at all.
One of Australia’s two active volcanoes on an island near Antarctica — known as Big Ben — has been spotted by satellite spewing lava. The lava flow on the uninhabited Heard Island, about 4,100km southwest of Perth and 1,500km north of Antarctica, is part of an ongoing eruption that was first noted more than a decade ago. The image was caught by the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite on Thursday, and is a composite of an optical picture and an infrared image. The lava is seen flowing down the side of Big Ben from near the summit, known as Mawson Peak.
SYMBOLIC: The bill sponsored by a cross-party group of lawmakers was hailed as a ‘historic moment’ in the fight for marriage equality, but is unlikely to pass Lawmakers in South Korea have proposed the country’s first same-sex marriage bill, in a move hailed by civic groups as a defining moment in the fight for equality. The marriage equality bill, proposed by South Korean lawmaker Jang Hye-yeong of the minor opposition Justice Party and co-sponsored by 12 lawmakers across all the main parties, seeks to amend the country’s civil code to allow same-sex marriage. The bill is unlikely to pass, but forms part of a trio of bills expected to increase pressure on the government to expand the idea of family beyond traditional criteria. The two other bills relate to
After the sun sets in Harare, the streets of Zimbabwe’s capital suddenly burst to life. Carts, cars and trucks turned into makeshift, unauthorized shops sell anything from potatoes to babies’ diapers on the pavements of the city center. Shopping is best done at night in times of hyperinflation and economic hardship. Cash-crunched Zimbabweans are increasingly turning to informal vendors for their groceries shopping, as, with little or no overheads, street hawkers can afford to undercut big supermarkets. “Everything is always cheaper outside,” Blessing Steven, 23, a taxi driver, said, buying a bottle of juice for US$0.50 at a roadside stall rather than
OUTSPOKEN: Cresenciano Bunduquin, who was killed by motorcycle-riding shooters, hosted a program about ‘hard-hitting’ local issues such as illegal gambling and politics A radio broadcaster was yesterday fatally shot outside his home in the central Philippines, police said, the latest in a long list of journalists killed in the country. Cresenciano Bunduquin, 50, was killed by motorcycle-riding shooters in Calapan City in Oriental Mindoro province, police Colonel Samuel Delorino said. One of the assailants died after Bunduquin’s son hit the shooters with his vehicle as they fled the scene of the pre-dawn attack. “The remaining suspect was able to run off. The hot pursuit operation is still ongoing,” Delorino said. The archipelago nation is one of the most dangerous places in the world for
RSS