| Abstract: | It has been discovered that the grassroots units that did not well in family planning (FP) programs in China were short of funding, while those units that performed poorly had more funds at their disposal. One of the reasons is that communities which did a good job in FP have less violations of the birth policy, and therefore, fewer fines could be collected by the FP unit. But in those grassroots units were the FP policy was not well implemented, there were more cases of births exceeding the birth quota, and more fines could be collected. Such an outcome was penalizing the diligent and rewarding those who did not work hard. This phenomenon was caused by a severe short fall of funding for the FP program. The program budget allocated by the local government was only 1/5 of what was needed, the remaining part was to be provided by fines. The negative consequences of such a practice was damaging to the morale of FP workers. The following suggestions were make for solving the problem. First, the government budget allocation to the FP program should be increased, and part of the budget allocation should be determined by the performance of the FP program. Second, the spending of income from FP fines should be closely monitored to prevent misuse of the fund. Third, fine collection should not be used as means of income generation for the program, and not other agencies should reallocate the funds from fines. Fourth, the government and FP agencies at all administrative levels should pay attention to the management of funds from fines. FP organizations at higher levels should be able to reallocate the funds from fines collected by units with a poor performance to the units with good program performance as an incentive and to supplement their income. |
