The first day of the year 2016 marked the end of China's controversial one-child policy after 40 years. The change is expected to catalyze the fertility rate, with two million couples projected to apply for a second pregnancy in 2014.

However, families will still require government-issued birth permits, or face the sanction of a forced abortion. Couples, who are caught breaking the law, will be penalized by losing state benefits, paying fines or even getting sterilized.

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Critics say the working single child, with two retired parents and four elderly grandparents to care for, can hardly provide for two children.

Xinhua, the official news agency in China, stated that China's full implementation of the policy of allowing each couple to have two children is an active response to the country's ageing population. This change of policy is aimed at balancing population development and addressing the effects of China's ageing population.

The reason for ending the policy for all Chinese citizens is purely demographical. Many Chinese are heading into retirement and the nation's population has too few young people entering the labor force to provide for their retirement, healthcare and continued economic growth.

According to Keiichiro Oizumi, Senior Economist at the Japan Research Institute, China's demographic dividend is just about spent. In 2011, Oizumi predicted that China's productive age population (15-64 years old) would begin to decline as a proportion of the whole in 2015. This assumes a constant birth rate in China's population that would begin to decline by 2030.

Now, according to statics, about 30 percent of China's population is over the age of 50 and the number of workers entering China's overall labor force in the last three years has been declining, a trend that is expected to accelerate.

While some have questioned the effectiveness of the reversal of the one-child policy in solving the country's population problem quickly, many Chinese citizens have celebrated the move as a positive step towards greater personal freedom.

TagsChina One Child Policy, 40 years, two children, New Policies, family planning