嬰兒潮 (yinger chao): Baby boom

The family planning authority used to worry that allowing couples to have a second child, if either the husband or wife was an only child, might result in a remarkable increase in the number of births. But in 2014, the first year after the adjustment was introduced, the number of births only increased by 470,000 on the year before.

Therefore, there have been frequent predictions that the government will completely loosen the family planning policy to allow all couples to have a second child. As a result some people are speculating there will be a fourth baby boom in the country.

However, many demographers deny such a policy change will result in a baby boom.

A baby boom actually refers to a remarkable increase in the birth rate in a certain period and a certain region. According to this definition, a baby boom is a sociological term rather than a demographic one.

There have been three baby booms in China since the founding of the people's republic in 1949. The first baby boom took place in the 1950s, the second from 1962 to 1976, and the third from 1986 to 1990. Afterward, China's number of births a year declined until 2000, after which it remained steady at about 16 million a year.