Year of Pig a golden opportunity for having kids

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's financial hub of Shanghai is enjoying a baby boom thanks to the golden Year of the Pig, considered an auspicious time to have children, state media said on Wednesday.

By the end of 2007, 160,000 babies will have been born in the city, a 20 percent increase from 2006, according to a report issued by Shanghai family planners.

"We expect the birth rate in Shanghai to continue to increase up until 2015, but the overall growth in the population will not be that significant," the China Daily quoted a senior family planning official as saying.

China enforces a strict one-child policy on most families, but this year is considered particularly auspicious for having children.

According to the Chinese zodiac and fortune tellers, it is a "golden pig" year that falls once every 60 years.

(Reporting by Beijing newsroom; Editing by Nick Macfie and Sanjeev Miglani)