China's stock market participants cheered the government's decision to allow couples to have more children - sending the share prices of health care companies up Tuesday.

However, stock prices may be among the few areas the change in approach has had a positive effect. 

"The three-child policy could have an effect on China's long-term economic growth, while its stimulus could be limited for those who already have two children," Luo Kun, an investment manager at Chasing Securities' equities investment arm, said.

The government changed the current policy restricting couples to two children as a result of a recent 10-year census that in May showed a big decline in births in the world's most populous country to alarming and unsustainable levels.

China scrapped its decades-old one-child policy in 2016, replacing it with a two-child limit to try and stave off risks to its economy from a rapidly aging population.

Rising housing and education costs, long working hours and poor child care mean China's newly minted middle classes are shunning the idea of larger families. With its ageing population and a fertility rate below most other parts of the world, the country faces a demographic crisis, the Australian Financial Review reported Tuesday.

 Economists and demographers are unanimous in their assessment of the Chinese government's announcement this week that it was raising the family limit from two children to three. It is too little, too late. Even well-off couples said they were not remotely interested in expanding their families.

 Couple's in China interviewed by the Guardian Tuesday said having more children would be too much of a burden. 

Chinese couples - especially women - are less willing to give birth these days. This is because the pressure is too high in today's society. After giving birth, as a woman, you are not likely to return to work any time soon due to child care. The more babies you have, the more you'll have to sacrifice in your career," Jia Shicong is a 31-year-old education project manager, said.

"I don't think the relaxation of the rules is going to be very effective at all. In China these days, there are very few people who would like to consider having more than two children. Even among those who contemplate having that many children, it is way too costly for young couples to raise them," Wang Zhenyu, a 33-year-old researcher, told the newspaper. "My parents' generation lived for their children, but my generation lives for ourselves."

Social media participants cited the high cost of raising children in urban China, where housing can be expensive and children undergo private tuition in addition to public schools amid a fiercely competitive education system, as deterrents to having children, Reuters reported.

Women in China already face a widening gender gap in terms of workforce participation and earnings, and have borne a growing share of child care duties as state-supported child care has declined, according to a report last year by the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

"Working women in the big cities will be further discriminated against, and it would be harder for women over 30s to find jobs," one Weibo user said.

The policy approved late Monday said that China would lower educational costs, step up tax and housing support and guarantee the legal interests of working women, but did not give specifics.

James Liang, a professor at Peking University's School of Economics and founder of online travel giant Trip.com Group, last month urged China to give parents of each newborn 1 million yuan ($156,843) to lift a fertility rate of just 1.3 children per woman in 2020. That rate is in line with countries such as Japan and Italy and far short of the 2.1 replacement rate, Reuters said.

He said this week that China would need to spend about 5% of gross domestic product, compared with "practically zero now," in cash, tax breaks, housing subsidies, day care and other incentives in order to get the fertility rate up to about 1.6, and expects the government soon to step up building day care centers and kindergartens.

Developed countries typically spend 1% to 4% of gross domestic product on such support, he said.

"The one I'd really like to see is the housing subsidy, especially in large cities," he said. "If the local government can return (land tax) or give discounts to couples with a third child or second child," it would be helpful, he said.

The policy change will also be coming with "supportive measures, which will be conducive to improving our country's population structure, fulfilling the country's strategy of actively coping with an aging population and maintaining the advantage, endowment of human resources," the State-run Xinhua News Agency said.

"If relaxing the birth policy was effective, the current two-child policy should have proven to be effective too. But who wants to have three children? Young people could have two children at most. The fundamental issue is living costs are too high and life pressures are too huge," senior economist at Commerzbank, Hao Zhou, said.

Human rights organizations criticized the government over its control of families. Amnesty International said such policies were a violation of sexual and reproductive rights.

"Governments have no business regulating how many children people have. Rather than 'optimizing' its birth policy, China should instead respect people's life choices and end any invasive and punitive controls over people's family planning decisions," Amnesty International said.