Late marriage was also encouraged in this period. In this period, the birth rate dropped from 26.6 per 1,000 to 14.4 per 1,000 and the natural increase rate from 21.5 per 1,000 to 8.9 per 1,000. Further development in the 1980s. In 1979, the Liaoning Family Planning Committee was officially set up and put under the administration of the provincial government. Therefore, since the 1980s, Liaoning has led the rest of the country in many indicators concerning family planning.
Population growth slows down year after year.
Since the late 1980s, population growth in Liaoning has entered a period of steady development. The birth rate dropped from 26.6 per 1,000 in 1970 to 8.9 in 1997 and the natural increase rate from 21.5 per 1,000 to 3.2. As early as in the 1960s, Liaoning started to draw up plans to control its population growth. In the 1970s, the population plan began to be included in the overall planning of the province s economic development. It has been a consensus among family planning workers and couples of childbearing age that having fewer births is vital to economic prosperity and national economic development at large.