Tianmen’s Lucrative Birth Bonuses Prompt Hukou Migration and Spark Debate Over Fairness
In the central Chinese province of Hubei, the city of Tianmen has become the focus of a national conversation about how far cash incentives can sway families’ reproductive choices and even their place of residence. Since early 2024 the municipal government has rolled out a package of subsidies that, on paper, rivals the most generous family‑benefit programmes in the country. The policy, which runs from April 1 2024 to May 1 2027, offers families with a second child a one‑off reward of 2,300 yuan plus a monthly childcare allowance of 800 yuan until the child turns three, while families with a third child receive 3,300 yuan up front and 1,000 yuan each month. In addition, households can claim a housing discount of up to 60,000 yuan for a second child and 80,000 yuan for a third. The headline figures, however, have attracted the most attention: Tianmen’s scheme stipulates that a second‑born child can be eligible for a total cash bonus of up to 280,000 yuan and a third child up to 350,000 yuan, making the city’s “high birth incentive” one of the most lucrative in China.
15 August 2025
The promise of such sums is already reshaping personal decisions, as illustrated by two recent interviews conducted by Dahe Daily’s Yu Video team and posted on the Chinese micro‑blogging platform Weibo. One of the interviewees, a mother who, for the sake of anonymity, is referred to only as “Baomama,” and her husband have lived and worked in Guangdong for years. In May 2025 she gave birth to her second child, and despite the delivery taking place in Guangdong, the family registered the infant under the father’s hukou – the household registration system – in Tianmen. Within a month the 6,500 yuan birth reward was transferred to their account, followed by punctual monthly subsidies of 800 yuan each, arriving on the first of July and August as promised. Baomama’s experience underscores how the city’s administrative machinery is processing applications quickly: paperwork was verified in roughly a month, and the cash handed out without delay.
A second story comes from Ms Lin, who is due to welcome her second child in August. Lin grew up in Tianmen, moved her hukou to Wuhan where she has lived for many years, and only recently learned of Tianmen’s generous bonus structure after the policy’s launch. Determined to benefit from the scheme, she has now transferred her household registration back to her hometown in Tianmen and intends to register her newborn there as well. A third voice, that of Ms Dong, echoed a similar sentiment, noting that the subsidies are dispensed reliably on the first of each month and that the eligibility thresholds are low enough that “you can receive the birth reward even before leaving the hospital.”
These individual accounts have sparked a broader online discussion, captured by the hashtag #有人为领生育补贴迁户至湖北天门# (“People are moving hukou to Tianmen to claim birth subsidies”). While the overall sentiment on social media is mixed, many commenters praise the promptness and inclusiveness of the payouts, whereas others question the fairness of a system that appears to reward families who can afford the logistical effort of moving their official residence across provincial lines. Critics also wonder whether the subsidies, while effective at boosting Tianmen’s birth statistics, may simply be shifting births from other regions rather than generating a net increase in the national fertility rate—a concern that looms large in a country grappling with a prolonged decline in births.
What makes Tianmen’s approach stand out, beyond the sheer size of the cash awards, is the breadth of its incentives. In addition to direct monetary payments, the city offers childcare vouchers, tax reductions and the aforementioned housing discounts. The policy’s design, according to local officials, aims to lower the financial barriers to raising multiple children and to counteract the aging demographic trends affecting much of China’s interior. Early data suggest the scheme is already having an impact: Tianmen’s birth registrations have risen sharply since the subsidies were announced, a “counter‑trend surge” that municipal leaders have highlighted as evidence of the programme’s success.
Nevertheless, the phenomenon of families relocating their hukou to claim benefits raises questions about the sustainability and equity of such incentives. The Chinese hukou system ties social services, education and health benefits to a person’s official place of residence, and moving it for financial gain can strain resources in receiving locales while depriving the original jurisdictions of their share of the population. If other cities replicate Tianmen’s model, the competition for “birth dollars” could intensify, prompting a scramble for hukou transfers that might undermine the intended goal of uniformly raising the national fertility rate.
For now, Tianmen’s high‑amount birth subsidies remain a vivid illustration of how aggressive fiscal policies can reshape personal decisions in real time. The stories of Baomama, Ms Lin and others provide a human face to a policy experiment that could influence how local governments across China approach one of the most pressing demographic challenges of the era. Whether the model proves to be a scalable solution or a localized anomaly will likely be decided in the coming years as the programme runs its course to 2027 and beyond.
