China announced Monday an end to its two-child policy, allowing families to have three children, The New York Times reports. The two-child policy was not seen as sufficient to end the country’s declining birth rates, and by adding the possibility to have one more child, the Communist Party said it would “help improve our country’s population structure and help implement a national strategy to actively respond to the aging population.” The country instituted a controversial one-child policy in 1980 to slow population growth but extended it to two children in 2016.