"AS to the result of the country's fifth census, the birthrate among women residents in the city has seen an obvious decrease," said Wang Zhan at the Population and Development Forum. "The increasing population in the city has mainly been contributed by migrant people."

Since the reform and opening up in the 1980s, the number of migrants in the city has increased at an average rate of 15 per cent every year.

The age structure among migrant people is also young with about 64 per cent between 20 to 39 years old, which is the peak reproductive period.

In the report of Sun Changmin, researcher at the Shanghai Population and Family Planning Committee, migrant women in this peak reproductive period account disproportionately for the rising total of births in Shanghai.

According to Sun's report, among Shanghai's more than 1.3 million migrant women of reproductive age, over 63 per cent have given birth. But only 65 per cent have only one child - the rest have more than two kids.

In 1991, the babies of migrant women in Shanghai accounted for 6.53 per cent of the city's total number of newborns. The rate had risen sharply to 24.3 per cent by 2000.

(Star News)