Recently, the Method of Family Planning Rewards for Only-Child Parents in Urban Areas (hereinafter referred to as the Method of Rewards) and the Opinion on Resolving Questions Left over by History regarding Family Planning Rewards for Urban Residents have been discussed and adopted at the Forty-Six Executive Meeting of the Eleventh People Government of Guangdong Province. The Method of Rewards stipulates that rewards will be offered to those only-child parents, of whom the males must be 60 years old and the females must be 55 years old by the first of January 2009, among the registered permanent urban residents in Guangdong Province. The rewarding amount should be not less than RMB 80 yuan per person per month. The reward will last to the death of that person. All the areas are encouraged to properly increase the rewarding amount. The rewards will be borne by the public finance of their areas of household registration and paid by month through financial institutions determined by public bidding. Calculated by RMB 80 yuan per person per month for the average life expectancy of 75 years, every person up to the conditions could receive an rewarding amount of about RMB 15,000 yuan.

In 2004, Guangdong Province issued the system to reward part of rural families who have practiced family planning. The system has ensured that all rural families practicing family planning can receive due economic rewards. In May 2009, Guangdong Population and Family Planning Commission and Guangdong Provincial Department of Finance jointly formulated a special assistance system for families practicing family planning, which has increased the amount of subsidies for couples with their only-child dead or disabled to at least RMB 150 and RMB 120 respectively and provided strong policy support for solving the economic difficulties of those special families practicing family planning. The Method of Rewards and the Opinion formulated by the Guangdong Provincial Government recently have made more comprehensive and systematic provisions on issues related to family planning rewards in urban areas, which emphasize on issues concerning family planning rewards for urban residents and made the standards and allocation methods of the rewards in the urban areas consistent with those in the rural areas so that the benefit-oriented mechanism is practice in the same way both in the rural and urban areas. These new policies of family planning rewards have enabled the benefit-oriented system to cover all the rural and urban residents and special families practicing family planning in Guangdong Province. All the systems have their own functions and at the same time are effectively connected, which has built up a basic framework of the benefit-oriented mechanism at the provincial level and will further promote the construction of this mechanism.

 

(Source:Wang Yang, Li Yan and Gao Conglin,General Office of Guangdong Population and Family Planning Commission)