More than one in three young people in mainland China are against having a second child, a media survey found last month, despite years of government policies encouraging childbirth.

One of the main points of discussion at the National People’s Congress annual plenum, which concluded on Thursday, was how to deal with mainland China’s aging population. The central authorities in Beijing have raised the issue to the national strategic level, meaning it would be of core concern when local governments are to work out policies for the year.

In a survey conducted by China Youth Daily, an official newspaper run by the Chinese Communist Youth League, more than 34% of the respondents indicated that they would not have a second child, and about 11% said they were still considering it. The survey focused on people who were born after the 1980s.

Regardless of whether they chose to have a second child or not, about 90% of the respondents also said that they felt the pressure of having a second child because no one could take care of the baby.

By the end of 2019, the population over the age of 60 made up 18.1% of the total population, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security said last month. It was expected that during the 14th Five-Year Plan period between 2021 and 2025, the elderly population would exceed 300 million, while the labor force would drop by 35 million, the ministry said.

Some of the key focuses during this year’s annual plenary session were to address China’s aging population, including liberalizing birth restrictions, delaying retirement age, strengthening old-age security and restructuring students’ education pathway to enter university and join the job market earlier.

Mainland authorities have implemented policies to encourage childbirth since 2015, including relaxing the one-child policy that had been in place for decades, to allow families living in urban areas to raise one more child.

But as of Dec. 31, 2020, the number of newborns decreased by 1.755 million compared with 2019, indicating that the two-child policy was not effective.

The China Youth Daily survey also showed that more than two-thirds of the respondents said no one could help take care of the child, followed by financial pressure (61.7%) and the lack of safe and suitable childcare facilities (54%).

Younger generations in mainland China generally married later, said He Dan, director of the China Population and Development Research Center, adding that more people have decided to stay single and not have children.

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