Beijing, May 31 (IANS): China will support couples that wish to have a third child, according to a meeting of the Political Bureau of Communist Party of China Central Committee held on Monday.

Implementing the policy and its relevant supporting measures will help improve China's population structure, actively respond to the aging population, and preserve the country's human resource advantages, Xinhua news agency reported citing the Bureau as saying.

The decision came just three weeks after the publication of the latest national census which revealed that China's population on the mainland reached 1.4 billion, growing 0.53 percent annually on average in the past decade.

Experts said that because of the decades-old one-child policy, which was only abolished in 2015, many Chinese have become accustomed to having only one child, dpa news agency reported.

In the past 10 years, China's population has grown by only 0.53 percent annually to just over 1.4 billion people - the slowest pace in decades.

The one-child policy that had been in place since 1979 was abolished in 2015 and replaced by a two-child policy.

However, the turnaround had only led to a slight increase in births in 2016.

Since then, the number has fallen every year.