The average cost of raising a child until the age of 18 was 485,000 yuan in China in 2019,     1     is higher than many countries including the US, France, Germany and Japan.     2     (compare) with 13 other countries in Europe, Asia and America, China ranked the second among all these countries in expense of raising a child to the age of 18. The report said that is one of the main reasons stopping couples from considering     3     (have) a child. Experts warn China’s aging population will put pressure     4     the health and social safety systems. The decreasing birth rate will     5     (deep) affect China’s economic growth and     6     (it) welfare problems.

New policies in 2021 encourage families     7    (have) up to three children, but China’s birth rate dropped to 7.52 births per 1, 000 people in the same year. That is the lowest since the National Bureau of Statistics began recording the information in 1949.

Three major ways — cash rewards, housing subsidies (补贴) and baby care centers     8     (expect) to improve China’s birthrate. Some areas     9    (give) couples money for having     10     second or third child since 2021.

When stores first started to ask whether customers wanted a paper receipt or an emailed receipt,I always took the email option. I knew I was giving up a little privacy when I did because the store had my email. Ever since, digital receipts     1     (be) increasingly common at a lot of different businesses and that’s a good thing.

Digital receipts offer a few improvements over traditional paper receipts. One is health-related. Lots of receipt paper contains bisphenol-A (双酸-A), or BPA. This chemical can     2     (potential) influence or outright change some bodily processes, like hair     3     (grow), hormone function and cell repair. Reducing receipt paper reduces     4     risk of BPA exposure for not only consumers but also for employees     5     handle the paper on a more routine basis.

The     6     (two) improvement is environmental. Receipt paper consumes a lot of trees, some 10 million of them a year,according to Green America. And at least half of that is probably used by businesses for     7     (they) still-too-long receipts. They also use up about 21 billion gallons of water a year -and these data are just for the United States! That’s so many trees and so much water, but all becomes much     8     (easy) than before after     9     (email) the receipt. Pile on the fact that BPA-coated paper can’t     10     (recycle) and you end up with a bunch of receipts in landfills.