China made its first major change to its controversial one-child policy in three-decades to grapple with a massive shift in its population toward the elderly and to combat a looming worker shortage, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The government announced on Friday that Chinese families will be able to have two children if one spouse or parent has no siblings. This is the first easing of a policy that has dictated Chinese family life since it was introduced by the Communist Party in 1979.

"It's a historic moment in the life of this infamous policy," said Wang Feng, a demographer at Fudan University in Shanghai, told the Wall Street Journal.

The policy change allows couples - "chiefly urban ones who have seen their living standards improve and increasingly chafed under social controls" - to expand their families, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Prior tempering with the policy has allowed some rural couples to have a second child and ethnic minorities to have more. Couples that consisted of two only children were also exempt from the one-child policy. Additionally, if the first child is born with birth defects or major health problems the couple is usually permitted to have a second child.

Ironically, the one-child policy, which was introduced to help the impoverished country feed its people is partly responsible for an impending worker shortage, which shrink the labor force and lead to pressuring wages.

 According to the Wall Street Journal, birthrates had fallen to levels below needed to replace the current population.

In a press release earlier this month, Chinese humanitarian group All Girls Allowed said that by 2050, China's population will be declining by 20 million every five years and one out of four people will be over the age of 65.

China's elderly population, which is 11 percent of the population today,  is estimated to climb up to 31 percent by 2050

Companies operating in China have reportedly already seen their profits diminish as the supply of labor tightens.

Fang said the policy change comes too little too late to solve a looming labor crisis in its overwhelming population of elderly people.

"A baby boom can be safely ruled out," said Feng. "Young people's reproductive desires have changed."

Shanghai bank employee Sun Wei, told the Wall Street Journal that higher costs of living and raising a child are reason he is not having a second child.

"As the cost of raising a child increases dramatically, people care more about the quality of a child's life, not the number," said Mao Zhuoyan, a researcher at the National Health and Family Planning Commission, which enforces the policy.