essay on the one child policy

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Establishment and implementation of China’s one-child policy

• Consequences of China’s one-child policy
• The end of China’s one-child policy

What is the one-child policy?

When was the one-child policy introduced, why is the one-child policy controversial, what are the consequences of the one-child policy.

• What are the major ethnic groups in China?

one-child policy

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• National Center for Biotechnology Information - Pub Med Central - China’s one child family policy
• Brookings Institution - The end of China’s one-child policy
• DigitalCommons at University of Nebraska - Lincoln - The Effects of China's One-Child Policy: The Significance for Chinese Women
• NPR - China's Former 1-Child Policy Continues To Haunt Families
• Academia - One Child Policy in China
• Embryo Project Encyclopedia - China's One-Child Policy
• The University of Tennessee Knoxville - TRACE - The One-Child Policy and Privatization of Education in China
• Asia Pacific Curriculum - China's One-Child Policy
• Table Of Contents

The one-child policy was a program in China that limited most Chinese families to one child each. It was implemented nationwide by the Chinese government in 1980, and it ended in 2016. The policy was enacted to address the growth rate of the country’s population , which the government viewed as being too rapid. It was enforced by a variety of methods, including financial incentives for families in compliance, contraceptives , forced sterilizations , and forced abortions .

September 25, 1980, is often cited as the official start of China ’s one-child policy, although attempts to curb the number of children in a family existed prior to that. Birth control and family planning had been promoted from 1949. A voluntary program introduced in 1978 encouraged families to have only one or two children. In 1979 there was a push for families to limit themselves to one child, but that was not evenly enforced across China. The Chinese government issued a letter on September 25, 1980, that called for nationwide adherence to the one-child policy.

China ’s one-child policy was controversial because it was a radical intervention by government in the reproductive lives of citizens, because of how it was enforced, and because of some of its consequences. Although some of the government’s enforcement methods were comparatively mild, such as providing contraceptives , millions of Chinese had to endure methods such as forced sterilizations and forced abortions . Long-term consequences of the policy included a substantially greater number of males than females in China and a shrinking workforce.

When did the one-child policy end?

The end of China ’s one-child policy was announced in late 2015, and it formally ended in 2016. Beginning in 2016, the Chinese government allowed all families to have two children, and in 2021 all married couples were permitted to have as many as three children.

There have been many consequences to China’s one-child policy. The country’s fertility rate and birth rate both decreased after 1980; the Chinese government estimated that some 400 million births had been prevented. Because sons were generally favoured over daughters, the sex ratio in China became skewed toward men, and there was a rise in the number of abortions of female fetuses along with an increase in the number of female babies killed or placed in orphanages.

After the one-child policy ended in 2016, China’s birth and fertility rates remained low, leaving the country with a population that was aging rapidly and a workforce that was shrinking. With data from China’s 2020 census highlighting an impending demographic and economic crisis, the Chinese government announced in 2021 that married couples would be allowed to have as many as three children.

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one-child policy , official program initiated in the late 1970s and early ’80s by the central government of China , the purpose of which was to limit the great majority of family units in the country to one child each. The rationale for implementing the policy was to reduce the growth rate of China’s enormous population . It was announced in late 2015 that the program was to end in early 2016.

China began promoting the use of birth control and family planning with the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949, though such efforts remained sporadic and voluntary until after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. By the late 1970s China’s population was rapidly approaching the one-billion mark, and the country’s new pragmatic leadership headed by Deng Xiaoping was beginning to give serious consideration to curbing what had become a rapid population growth rate. A voluntary program was announced in late 1978 that encouraged families to have no more than two children, one child being preferable. In 1979 demand grew for making the limit one child per family. However, that stricter requirement was then applied unevenly across the country among the provinces, and by 1980 the central government sought to standardize the one-child policy nationwide. On September 25, 1980, a public letter—published by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party to the party membership—called upon all to adhere to the one-child policy, and that date has often been cited as the policy’s “official” start date.

The program was intended to be applied universally, although exceptions were made—e.g., parents within some ethnic minority groups or those whose firstborn was handicapped were allowed to have more than one child. It was implemented more effectively in urban environments , where much of the population consisted of small nuclear families who were more willing to comply with the policy, than in rural areas, with their traditional agrarian extended families that resisted the one-child restriction. In addition, enforcement of the policy was somewhat uneven over time, generally being strongest in cities and more lenient in the countryside. Methods of enforcement included making various contraceptive methods widely available, offering financial incentives and preferential employment opportunities for those who complied, imposing sanctions (economic or otherwise) against those who violated the policy, and, at times (notably the early 1980s), invoking stronger measures such as forced abortions and sterilizations (the latter primarily of women).

The result of the policy was a general reduction in China’s fertility and birth rates after 1980, with the fertility rate declining and dropping below two children per woman in the mid-1990s. Those gains were offset to some degree by a similar drop in the death rate and a rise in life expectancy , but China’s overall rate of natural increase declined.

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China's Former 1-Child Policy Continues To Haunt Families

The legacy of China's one-child rule is still painfully felt by many of those who suffered for having more children. Ran Zheng for NPR hide caption

The legacy of China's one-child rule is still painfully felt by many of those who suffered for having more children.

Editor's note: This story contains descriptions that may be disturbing.

LINYI, China — Outside, rain falls. Inside, a middle-school student completes his homework. His mother watches him approvingly.

She is especially protective of him. He's the youngest of three children this mother had under China's one-child policy.

Giving birth to him was a huge risk — and she took no chances. She carried her son to term while hiding in a relative's house. She wanted to avoid the "family planning officials" in her home village, just outside Linyi, a city of 11 million in China's northern Shandong province, where the policy's enforcement was especially violent.

What was she hiding from? What could the family planning officials have done to her? She demurs, her voice growing quiet. "All we can do is go on living," she says. "There is no use in trying to make sense of society."

A mother and a grandmother take care of a child in Beijing on Jan. 1, 2016. Married couples in China in 2016, were allowed to have two children, after concerns over an aging population and shrinking workforce ushered in an end to the country's controversial one-child policy. Fred Dufour/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Her son is part of the last generation of children in China whose births were ruled illegal at the time. Anxious that rapid population growth would strain the country's welfare systems and state-planned economy, the Chinese state began limiting how many children families could have in the late 1970s.

The limit in most cases was just one child. Then in 2016, the state allowed two children. And in May, after a new census showed the birth rate had slowed, China raised the cap to three children. State media celebrated the news.

But the legacy of the one-child rule is still painfully felt by many parents who suffered for having multiple children. For some, the pain is still too much to bear.

"It has been so many years, and I have let the pain go," the mother of three says, eyes downcast. "If you carry it with you all the time, it gets too tiring."

A mother's quandary

One night in August 2008, the mother made a fateful decision. Her body was giving her all the telltale signs that she was pregnant — again.

She already had two children and had gone through four abortions afterward, to avoid paying the ruinously high "social maintenance fee" demanded from families as penalty when they contravened birth limits.

Medical staff massage babies at an infant care center in Yongquan, in Chongqing municipality, in southwest China, on Dec. 15, 2016. China had 1 million more births in 2016 than in 2015, following the end of the one-child policy. AFP via Getty Images hide caption

But this time she felt differently.

"I had already had two children but my heart just did not feel right," says the woman, now in her 50s, who works part time in a canning factory. NPR isn't using her name to protect her identity because of the trauma she suffered. "I thought this is it — if I do not have this child, my body will not be able to have any more."

Officials in her village were actively policing families under the one-child policy. Enforcement of the policy had begun to loosen by the early 2000s, as horrific stories of forced abortions and botched sterilizations caused policymakers to rethink the rule. But starting in 2005, the authorities began enforcing the policy with a renewed ferocity in Linyi.

So the mother went into hiding to carry her son to term. One night, family planning officials approached her husband, intending to pressure him and his wife into ending the pregnancy. He used a pickax to drive them off and was imprisoned for that for half a year.

An old friend of hers, the blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng , knows full well what she and tens of thousands of other women in Linyi city went through.

Chinese parents, who have children born outside the country's one-child policy, protest outside the family planning commission in an attempt to have their fines canceled in Beijing, on Jan. 5, 2016. For decades, China's family planning policy limited most urban couples to one child and rural couples to two if their first was a girl. Ng Han Guan/AP hide caption

"The doctors would inject poison directly into the baby's skull to kill it," Chen says, drawing on recordings he made of interviews with hundreds of women and their families in Linyi. "Other doctors would artificially induce labor. But some babies were alive when they were born and began crying. The doctors strangled or drowned those babies."

The terror of such enforcement of birth limits was widespread in Linyi, even if residents were not themselves planning on giving birth.

"Officials would kidnap you if you tried to have two children. If you were hiding and they could not find you, they would kidnap your elder relatives and make them stand in cold water, in the winter," remembers Lu Bilun, a resident.

Lu says the harassment became so savage that elderly residents of Linyi became afraid to leave their homes out of fear they might be kidnapped. Lu says he paid a 4,000 yuan fine to have his second son in 2006 (about $500 at the time), after hiding his wife for months. "This was not your average level of policy enforcement. It was vicious," he says.

Chen, the lawyer, mounted a class action lawsuit on behalf of Linyi's women. The suit led to an apology from the authorities in Linyi and a reduction in the kidnappings, beatings and forced abortions.

Children ride a toy train at a shopping mall in Beijing, on Oct. 30, 2015. China's decision to abolish its one-child policy offered some relief to couples and to sellers of baby-related goods, but the government hasn't lifted birth limits entirely. Andy Wong/AP hide caption

But the Chinese government punished Chen for his activism by imprisoning him, then trapping him for nearly three years in his home , in a village just outside Linyi.

In 2012, Chen escaped by scaling a wall and running to the next village, despite being blind and having broken his foot during the escape. There, he was picked up by supporters and driven to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. He was able to fly to the U.S . after weeks of tense negotiation. Today, he lives in Maryland with his family.

The price of defiance

"The policy was wrong and what we did with Chen was right," says a neighbor of Chen, the lawyer who sued the city of Linyi. The man wants to remain unnamed because he believes he could be harassed again for speaking of that time.

In the 1990s, he says, family planning officials ambushed him in his home at night and beat him with sticks in an effort to convince his wife to abort their third son.

Chinese lawyer Chen Guangcheng attends a rally to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre June 4, 2019, at the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol. Chen had been persecuted and detained in China after his work advising villagers and speaking out official abuses under the one-child rule. Alex Wong/Getty Images hide caption

"Our country's leaders did not want us to have children and I didn't know why, but we could not do anything about it," he sighs.

He and his wife persevered and had three sons. They did not officially register the last two to avoid paying a fine, but the father says he still paid a bribe to family planning officials to avoid further harassment. These economic penalties depleted his life savings, a financial impact that compounded over the ensuing years.

The policy permeates through Chinese society in other, sometimes unexpected ways. Because many prioritized having a son over a daughter, orphanages experienced a surge in baby girls who were abandoned or put up for adoption. Single's Day, China's biggest online shopping holiday — akin to Black Friday in the U.S. — is a recognition of the many bachelors who are unable to find partners in a gender-skewed society.

"A very unbalanced population gender-wise has also led to a rise in property prices in major cities because families of men have bought apartments to make their sons eligible in a marriage market where there are millions of missing women," says Mei Fong , who wrote a book on the one-child rule. "These effects will be felt in the generation ahead."

A child walks near government propaganda one of which reads "1.3 billion people united" on the streets of Beijing, China, Tuesday, March 8, 2016. Ng Han Guan/AP hide caption

According to the census conducted last year, the population is aging and there are fewer young children and working-age people, a major demographic shift that comes with its own economic strains. That's pushing policymakers to consider raising the official retirement age — currently 60 for men and 55 for women — for the first time in 40 years.

Yet the authorities still only allow couples to have three children. Why won't China remove all caps?

"Despite all the overwhelming demographic evidence, they're saying, 'We need to control you,'" says the author, Fong. Anxious about already strained public education and health care systems, China's leadership is reportedly considering ditching limits entirely. It has been slow to completely dismantle its massive family planning bureaucracy built up over the past four decades. And according to an Associated Press investigation , it continues to impose stricter controls over births — including forced sterilizations — among ethnic minorities, like the Turkic Uyghurs.

Some demographers in China argue that instituting birth limits was necessary for keeping birth rates low. But Stuart Gietel-Basten, a demographer at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, cautions there is no definitive answer. "There is only one China and there is only one one-child policy, so it is kind of impossible to say the real effect of that was [of the policy]," he says.

Families were already having fewer children in the 1970s, before the policy took force in 1979. "The one-child policy was not the only thing that happened in China in the 1980s and 1990s," Gietel-Basten says. "There was also rapid urbanization, economic growth, industrialization, female emancipation and more female labor force participation."

A man and a child are reflected on a glass panel displaying a tiger at the Museum of Natural History in Beijing, Dec. 2, 2016. Andy Wong/AP hide caption

It was worth the cost

The fact that the children are alive at all makes Chen, the lawyer, feel his seven years in prison and house arrest were all worth it.

"I really feel happy. Even if I had to go to prison and endure beatings, in the end, these children were able to survive. They must be in middle school or high school by now."

The mother of one of these middle schoolers holds her son close. Part of the reason she demurred when first speaking to NPR was because of how dearly her family fought for his birth.

Her worries these days are more mundane. She wants to start preparing for her son's marriage — a costly endeavor as rural families expect the husband to provide a material guarantee for any future wife.

"That requires buying them a car, an apartment. No one can afford that," she complains.

Her job at a nearby canning factory refuses to hire her full time, she says, because she is a mother of three and needs to leave every afternoon to pick up her son from school.

And so, ironically, now that people are allowed to have more children, they are increasingly reluctant to, because of the high cost of child care and education.

"Women have it all figured out now — they won't have more kids even when they're told to have more!" the mother laughs helplessly.

"People act in funny ways," she says. "There is no point in controlling them."

• one-child policy
• Chinese society
• Chinese law
• Chinese population

Was the One-Child Policy Ever a Good Idea?

China’s “one-child” policy has been relaxed, and now married couples may have two children. But according to scholars, the damage is already done.

China’s infamous “one-child policy” came to an end in 2016, when family limits in the nation were raised to two children.

The policy was always controversial. Back in 2016, sociology scholars Wang Feng, Baochang Gu, and Yong Cai reported on  drastic measures that had been taken to enforce the former policy , including an alleged 14 million abortions, 20.7 million sterilizations, and 17.8 million IUD insertions, many of which may have been involuntary.

The greatest irony of this is that the policy may have been a misguided measure from the start.

The restriction on family sizes was introduced in the 1980s. According to Feng et al., the policy was meant to be a temporary way to slow population expansion and facilitate economic growth at a time when the nation “faced severe shortages of capital, natural resources, and consumer goods.”

But many say China may have seen its much-desired decline in fertility happen naturally. Feng et al. note that “the answer to China’s underdevelopment did not come from its extreme birth control measures, but from reform policies that loosened state control over the economy.” They continue:

China’s economic boom over the last few decades has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, sent almost 100 million young men and women to college, and inspired generations of Chinese, both young and old, to purse their economic goals…Contrary to the claims of some Chinese officials, much of China’s fertility decline to date was realized prior to the launch of the one-child policy, under a much less strict policy in the 1970s calling for later marriage, longer birth intervals, and fewer births (Whyte, Wang, and Cai 2015). In countries that had similar levels of fertility in the early 1970s without extreme measures such as the one-child policy, fertility also declined, and some achieved a level similar to China’s today.

A decline in fertility rates often accompanies these cultural shifts, as families focus on careers, invest in education and gain access to family planning services.

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Moreover, according to the scholars, the harmful one-child policy lingered too long. The one-child policy became a part of a larger social conversation that “erroneously blamed population growth for virtually all of the country’s social and economic problems.” This is a cultural psychological belief that will take much more than a government act to reverse.

Additionally, The Guardian reports myriad negative reactions to the removal of the policy. According to the article, exhausted mothers can’t imagine enduring the pressures of having more than one child in China’s fast-paced, high-pressure environment. Some women who had their child and then went back to work are suddenly now seen as a liability in their workplaces again because they might now leave to have an additional child. Sociologist Ye Liu told The Guardian that women she had interviewed in China “feel like they were experiments of the state. They were the experiments [under the one-child policy] and now they are another experiment. They feel like they are forever being used by the state laboratory.” Plus, a struggling economy has some parents wondering what the point of bringing another child into the world would be. One parent is quoted as saying, “It’s not that I’m worried about [my son’s] future. I have no hope for it at all.”

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Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

Assessing the impact of the “one-child policy” in China: A synthetic control approach

Contributed equally to this work with: Stuart Gietel-Basten, Xuehui Han, Yuan Cheng

Roles Conceptualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Division of Social Sciences, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, PRC

Roles Data curation, Formal analysis, Methodology, Software, Writing – original draft

Affiliation Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Beijing, PRC

Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Methodology, Software, Supervision, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Population Research Institute, LSE-Fudan Research Centre for Global Public Policy, Fudan University, Shanghai, PRC

• Stuart Gietel-Basten, 
• Xuehui Han, 

• Published: November 6, 2019
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220170
• Reader Comments

There is great debate surrounding the demographic impact of China’s population control policies, especially the one-birth restrictions, which ended only recently. We apply an objective, data-driven method to construct the total fertility rates and population size of a ‘synthetic China’, which is assumed to be not subjected to the two major population control policies implemented in the 1970s. We find that while the earlier, less restrictive ‘later-longer-fewer’ policy introduced in 1973 played a critical role in driving down the fertility rate, the role of the ‘one-child policy’ introduced in 1979 and its descendants was much less significant. According to our model, had China continued with the less restrictive policies that were implemented in 1973 and followed a standard development trajectory, the path of fertility transition and total population growth would have been statistically very similar to the pattern observed over the past three decades.

Citation: Gietel-Basten S, Han X, Cheng Y (2019) Assessing the impact of the “one-child policy” in China: A synthetic control approach. PLoS ONE 14(11): e0220170. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220170

Editor: Bruno Masquelier, University of Louvain, BELGIUM

Received: October 24, 2018; Accepted: July 2, 2019; Published: November 6, 2019

Copyright: © 2019 Gietel-Basten et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files.

Funding: The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology provided support for this study in the form of salaries for SGB, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank provided support for this study in the form of salaries for XH, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Fudan University provided support for this study in the form of salaries for YC, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section.

Competing interests: The authors have read the journal's policy and the authors of this manuscript have the following competing interests: SGB is paid employee of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, XH is paid employees of Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, YC is paid employees of Fudan University. There are no patents, products in development or marketed products associated with this research to declare. This does not alter the authors' adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Introduction

In 2015, China finally ended all one-birth restrictions [ 1 ]. The move to a national two-child policy is intended to facilitate a more balanced population development and to counter aging. There is currently a large focus placed on the appraisal of the population control policies (often erroneously thought of as the ‘one-child policy’) imposed in the late 1970s [ 2 ]. The world's most comprehensive national-level population control policy has been subject to many criticisms, both domestically and internationally [ 3 , 4 ]. Sanctioned and unsanctioned instances of forced abortion [ 5 ], sterilization [ 6 ], and institutional financial irregularities [ 7 ] have been identified as bases for criticism. The policies have also been cited as the root cause of other challenges [ 8 ], including skewed sex ratios at birth [ 9 ], the questionable demographic data because of hidden children [ 10 ], and social problems associated with the enforced creation of millions of one-child families (like the social, economic, and psychological plight of couples who lost their only child and are now unable to have more children) [ 11 ].

On the other hand, China's population control policies have also been recognized as being effective. This ‘effectiveness’ is based on the estimations that hundreds of millions of births had been ‘averted’ [ 12 ] and the penalty of “above-quota-births” was found reducing births in rural China [ 13 ]. According to an environmentalist narrative, these births (and the resultant population growth) would have contributed to further climate change [ 14 ]. In 2014, for example, The Economist labeled the ‘China one-child policy’ as the fourth largest ‘action’ to slow global warming, estimated at 1.3bn tonnes of CO2 [ 15 ]. Elsewhere, the popular media, as well as other commentators, regularly espouse a ‘one-child policy' as a panacea to respond to perceived ‘overpopulation' and associated concerns of both an environmental and Malthusian nature. Indeed, UN Resident Coordinator in Kenya, Siddharth Chatterjee, said in 2017 the first annual Africa-China Conference on Population and Development, "China is an example to the rest of the developing countries when it comes to family planning."

These calculations of ‘births averted’ are based on various models, which employ counterfactual history. The estimate of ‘400 million births averted’ is attributed to the one-child population policy [ 16 ], which is usually calculated by holding earlier, higher fertility rates constant. Other estimates compared the Chinese experience with either a country or group of countries considered to be similar to China in terms of certain socioeconomic and political indicators. The problem with such counterfactual histories is that they are inevitably subjective and indicators considered did not enter into the model in a systematic way. Contrast to the estimation of 400 million births averted, the effect of the one-child policy is found to be small, especially for the long-run [ 17 ], which was attributed to the aggressive family planning program in the early 1970s [ 18 ] based on the findings that the birth rate of 16 countries with similar birth rates to that of China in 1970 declined significantly after 1979 and even sharper than what was observed in China [ 19 ].

To evaluate the impact of China’s population control policies, we employ the Synthetic Control Method where we compare China to a constructed ‘synthetic’ control population, which shares similar features with China during the pre-intervention periods. This innovative data- and math-driven methodology is used extensively in many disciplines, including public health [ 20 ], politics [ 21 ], and economics [ 22 ]. One of the caveats of our paper is that we cannot single out the ‘cohort’ effects. In addition to the socio-economic factors, the decline of TFRs might partially be the result that females entering childbearing age in 1970s did not think giving more births is “fashionable” compared to those who entered childbearing age in 1950s. Such mindset changes have been observed in Brazil [ 23 ]. Unfortunately, our approach cannot differentiate the cohort effect from the impact of social-economic factors. We have to bear in mind this caveat in the following analysis.

In the case of China, the first intervention (or ‘shock’) we seek to evaluate is the ‘Later-Longer-Fewer Policy’ introduced in 1973 [ 7 ]. Under this policy, a minimum age of marriage was imposed, as well as mandatory birth spacing for couples and a cap on the total number of children [ 24 ]. The rules were differentiated for men and women in rural and urban areas. Also, like the case in other countries, widespread contraception (and free choice) was introduced, coupled with large-scale education on family planning [ 25 ]. The second ‘shock’ is the ‘One-Child Policy' introduced in 1979, where a one-child quota was strictly enforced. Following initial ‘shock drives' of intensive mass education, insertion of IUDs after the first birth, sterilization after the second birth, and large-scale abortion campaigns, the policy quickly became unpopular and was reformed in 1984 and onwards, creating a very heterogeneous system [ 26 ]. Despite the series of reforms, the majority of couples in China were still subject to one-child quotas in the 1980s and 1990s.

Institutional Background

With high birth rates in the 1970s, the Chinese government had grown increasingly concerned about the capacity of existing resources to support the ballooning population. In response, from 1973, the Chinese government widely promoted the practice of ‘later-longer-fewer’ to couples, referring respectively to later marriage and childbearing, longer intervals between births, and fewer children. Rules were more severe in urban areas where women were encouraged to delay marriage until the age of 25 and men at 28 and for couples to have no more than two children. In the rural areas, the age of marriage was set at a minimum of 23 for women, and 25 for men and the maximum family size was set at three children. Birth control methods and family planning services were also offered to couples. The policy at the time can be considered “mild” in a sense that couples were free to choose what contraceptive methods they would use and the policy on family planning was more focused on the education of the use of contraceptives [ 27 ].

However, such mild family planning program was deemed insufficient in controlling the population, since it would not be able to meet the official target of 1.2 billion people by 2000 despite the large decrease in the total fertility rate (TFR) in the late 1970s. In 1979, the government introduced the One-Child Policy in the Fifth National People’s Congress, a one-size-fits-all model and widely considered the world’s strictest family planning policy. Some exemptions were allowed, and a family could have more than one child if the first child has a disability, both parents work in high-risk occupations, and/or both parents are from one-child families themselves. The State Family Planning Bureau aimed to achieve an average of 1.2 children born per woman nationally in the early and mid-1980s [ 27 ].

From 1980 to 1983, the one-child policy was implemented through "shock drives" in the form of intensive mass education programs, IUD insertion for women after the first birth, sterilization for couples after the second birth, and abortion campaigns for the third pregnancy [ 27 , 28 ]. Policies were further enforced by giving incentives for compliance and disincentives for non-compliance, though these varied across local governments [ 27 ]. Liao [ 29 ] identified the following as the usual benefits and penalties at the local level. Families with only one child can obtain benefits like child allowance until age 14; easier access to schools, college admission, employment, health care, and housing; and reduction in tax payments and the opportunity to buy a larger land for families in rural areas. Penalties for having above-quota births, on the other hand, include reduction in the parents’ wages by 10 to 20 percent for 3 to 14 years, demotion or ineligibility for promotion for parents who work in the government sector, exclusion of above-quota children to attend public schools, and, in rural areas, a one-time fine which may account for a significant fraction of the parents’ annual income.

The tight one-child policy was met by resistance, and the government allowed more exemptions [ 27 ]. Exemptions were drafted at the local level as the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee took into account the diverse demographic and socioeconomic conditions across China [ 30 ]. In 1984, the program allowed two births per couple in rural areas if the first child is a girl or if the family is from a minority ethnic group, but this was done only in six provinces. One significant change in the family planning policy is that couples with one daughter in rural areas could have a second child after a certain interval, which ranges from four to six years, and this was fully implemented in 18 provinces by the end of 1989. The performance of local cadres was also evaluated with family planning activity as the top criterion [ 27 ]. The stringency of the one-child policy was further moderated amid China’s commitment to the International Conference on Population Development held in Cairo in 1994. In 1995, the family planning program changed its stance from being target-driven to client-centered in adherence to international reproductive health standards. More attention was given to individual contraceptive rights, and the government allowed couples to choose their contraceptive method with the guidance of the professional and technical staff [ 22 ].

Throughout the 1990s, provinces amended their own regulations about the exemptions under the guidelines of the State Family Planning Commission, now the National Population and Planning Commission [ 30 ]. According to Gu et al. [ 30 ], the provincial-level exemptions on allowing more than one child in a family can be classified into four broad groups: (1) gender-based and demographic (if the couple living in a rural area had the only daughter, or they belong to one-child family themselves); (2) economic (if the couple work in risky occupations or have economic difficulties); (3) political, ethical, and social (if the couple belong to a minority ethnic group, the man is marrying into a woman’s family, the family is a returning overseas Chinese, or the person has the status of being a single child of a revolutionary martyr); and (4) entitlement and replacement (if the couple’s first child died or is physically handicapped, the person who is divorced or widowed remarries, or the person is the only productive son in a family of multiple children in the rural area).

While the central government had asserted that population control remains a basic state policy, it hardly implemented a uniform set of rules across the country, hence the varying exemptions across localities [ 30 ]. This was until the Population and Family Planning Law of 2001 was put into effectivity. The law summarized the rights and obligations of Chinese citizens in family planning and served as the legal basis for addressing population issues at the national level. This law still promoted the one-child policy, but couples were given more reproductive rights, including the right to decide when to have children and the spacing between children if having a second child is allowed, as well as the right to choose contraceptive methods. It also discussed the imposition of social compensation fees for those who violated the law, which will be collected by local governments and family planning officials [ 27 ].

The one-child policy was further loosened in 2013 when it was announced that two children would be allowed if one parent is an only child [ 31 ]. Basten and Jiang [ 32 ] summarized the popular views on the issues that can be addressed by this policy shift: skewed sex ratio at birth, projected decline of the working-age population, large number of couples who were left childless because of the death of their only child, and evasion and selective enforcement of fines for out-of-quota and unauthorized births. They, however, argued that this change in the one-child policy could only have minimal impact on the aging population and shrinking workforce because of fertility preferences to have only one child and a smaller likelihood of these births to occur.

It was announced in October 2015 that the one-child policy would be replaced by a universal two-child policy. Driven by some evidence that this relaxation of the policy has not achieved a significant birth boosting effect, the Chinese government has started in 2018 to draft a proposed law that will remove all the limits on the number of children families can have [ 33 ].

The Synthetic control method

As reflected in the above procedure, the core of this method focuses on finding the combination of countries that collectively resemble China before the intervention. The model automatically assigns different weights to different countries in such a way that the distance between the actual and synthetic China before the policy intervention will be minimized in terms of fertility rate and other related characteristics. The optimal weights then are applied to the other countries for the post-intervention period to obtain Synthetic China without either the 1973 intervention or the 1979 intervention.

The next step is to decide what variables should be included in vector Z. We chose to include the childbearing age, life expectancy at birth, and sex ratio of male to female between 0 and 4 years old as the non-economic variables. The childbearing age affects the mothers’ age-specific fertility intensity and the total fertility rate [ 34 , 35 ]. With the maximum fertility age being certain, higher childbearing age might imply lower TFR. The life expectancy at birth is related to age-specific mortality. With a lower mortality rate, fewer births are required to obtain a desired number of children. For example, as observed by Galor [ 36 ], the TFR declined while the life expectancy improved in Western Europe in the past half-century. The sex ratio of male to female represents the inner-gender competition. A higher sex ratio of male to female implies higher competition among males, so it is more rewarding for females to delay marriage and to give birth in exchange for opportunities to obtain a better match with males. Using data from England and a generalized linear model, Chipman and Morrison [ 37 ] confirmed the significant negative relationship between the sex ratio of male to female and birth rate, especially for the three age groups of females at 20–24, 25–29, and 30–34 years old.

The other group of variables included in vector Z is economic variables, such as GDP per capita and years of schooling. The New Home Economics approach [ 38 ] emphasizes the negative relationship between income and fertility rate through the role of the opportunity cost of parenting time. The model suggests that more children will consume more parenting time, which could otherwise be used to generate more income. Galor and Weil [ 39 ] strengthened the reasoning by arguing that the increase in capital per capita raises women’s relative wages because the complementary effect of capital to female labor is higher than to male labor. The increase in women’s relative wage raises the cost of children. Because of the resulting smaller population effect, the lower fertility further raises the GDP per capita. In addition to the parenting opportunity cost, the economic development might result in fertility declines through two other channels:(1)With economic development, the living standards improved and the mortality rate decreased so that parents can have the same desirable living kids with fewer births; and (2) With the economic development, people have more tools to save, for example, the pension system, which reduces the needs of having more offspring to finance the retirement. The relationships between the macro-economy and the fertility patterns are documented for China [ 40 , 41 , 42 ]. The years of schooling also affects fertility through the opportunity costs channel. Higher education is associated with higher productivity, which would induce the higher opportunity cost of raising children.

Our analysis uses the TFR data in the period of 1955–1959 from the United Nations’ World Population Prospects (WPP) and the annual TFR data in 1960 to 2015 from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators (WDI) except for the following five economies. For Curaçao, Luxembourg, Serbia, Seychelles, and Taiwan, we use the UN’s WPP data in the entire period of 1955 to 2015. Like in the TFR data, we use the life expectancy at birth data in the period 1955–1959 from the UN’s WPP data, while annual life expectancy data in 1960 to 2015 is obtained from the WDI, except for the following four economies. For Curaçao, Serbia, Seychelles, and Taiwan, we use the UN’s WPP in the entire period of 1955 to 2015. The whole data series of the male-to-female ratio of the population aged 0–4 years old are obtained from the UN. We use the expenditure-side real GDP at chained PPPs and the size of population data from the Penn World Tables 9.0 (PWT 9.0) to calculate the GDP per capita and get its natural logarithm. The average years of schooling data obtained from the Barro-Lee Database is used to measure the average level of education in a given country. Historical schooling data are only available at five-year intervals, so we apply a linear interpolation method to infer the annual data from 1950 to 2010. The average childbearing age data are from the UN’s WPP in the entire period of 1955 to 2015. Additionally, all WPP data, except the male-to-female ratio, are only available at a five-year interval, so we also employ the linear interpolation method to get the annual estimates.

The original dataset consisted of 184 countries, but after removing the countries with missing data for the needed variables from 1955 to 2010, only 64 countries remained in the final dataset for the analysis, including China. The final list of countries included in the analysis is provided in Table A in S1 File .

Empirical result

For simplicity, we label synthetic China as Synth China, whose characteristics are constructed using the values of the other countries and the countries’ corresponding weights. We present the average values of our target variable TFR and fertility-related variables for Synth China and our comparator in Table 1 . The column on China shows the actual numbers for China, while the column on Synth China displays the values for the counterfactual Synth China for the pre-1973 period and pre-1979 and post-1973 period. For comparison purposes, we also include the average values of all countries in the sample as our comparator to show how different it would be between actual China and the whole sample in the absence of synthesizing. Looking at the pre-1973 period, Synth China has the same average TFR of 5.85 as actual China, while our comparator has an average of 4.71. For the remaining variables, the values of Synth China are all closer to that of actual China than those of our comparator, which indicates that Synth China resembles actual China not only in terms of TFR but also in terms of other fertility-related characteristics. Looking at the pre-1979 and post-1973 period, the TFR of Synth China is again almost the same as that of actual China.

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220170.t001

All the other variables of Synth China are more comparable to actual China than to our comparator, except for average years of schooling. The significant difference (1.65 years) in years of schooling for the period of 1973–1979 between China (4.66 years) and the Synthetic cohort (6.31 years) is mainly due to the school-year-reduction-reform to taken by the Chinese government during the cultural revolution period (1966–1976). The original 6 years of primary schooling, 3 years of middle school, and 3 years of high school (6-3-3) for the pre-1966 periods were reduced to 5-2-2, respectively [ 43 ]. That means the same length of years of schooling represented higher accomplishment in terms of a diploma during 1966–1976. Five years of schooling in this period indicated completion of preliminary school while it used to represent the unaccomplished preliminary school. Most countries included in the studies adopted the 12-year schooling system. If we measure the accomplishment of education by using the relative years of schooling, which is to scale down by the years required for completion of high school—52% (4.66/9) for actual China and 53% (6.31/12) for Synthetic cohort—we would have quite close level of relative years of schooling between China and the Synthetic cohort. Additionally, the difference in years of schooling between actual China and the Synthetic cohort was not as significant for the pre-1973 intervention period (1965–1973) as for the pre-1979 and post-1973 period is because even the implementation of the school-year-reduction-reform was started from 1966 it requires five years for the effects to be fully materialized. The education system was changed back to 6-3-3 system after 1976.

In the following simulation, we use the periods 1973–1979 and 1980–2015 as the post-intervention periods to quantify the impact of the first and second shocks, respectively.

The TFR simulated for Synth China assuming without the 1973 shock, with the 1973 shock but without the 1979 shock, and the actual TFR are plotted in Fig 1 . The dashed blue line represents synthetic China's simulated TFR in the period 1955–1979 assuming without 1973 shock. The gap between the Synth China and actual China (represented by the solid black line) between 1973 and 1979 is the reduction in the TFR caused by the 1973 intervention. The dotted green line is the TFR of Synth China estimated for the period 1973–2015 with the period 1973–1979 as the pre-intervention period set to search for the optimal weights, which is to find the best comparable countries with fertility behaviors like China with 1973 shock but without 1979 shock. The simulated TFR for periods after 1979 is supposed to represent the TFR of China with the 1973 policy but without the 1979 policy. Contrary to the commonly claimed radical effect, the “One-Child” policy in 1979 only induced a small dip in the TFR.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220170.g001

As shown in Fig 1 , the TFR in synthetic China is already well above the real TFR, even before the 1973 shock. The reason is that the best fit found by the algorithm cannot match the whole pattern of actual TFR (a complete overlap of actual and simulated China) for the pre-intervention periods, especially for the pre-1973 period (blue line). As shown in section 3, the target function for optimization is ‖ X 1 − WX 0 ‖, which measures the distance between the mean of actual China and Syn China without the policy of 73&79 for years before 1973. When the pattern of actual TFR is not well regulated, the simulated TFRs for the pre-1973 periods cannot match actual China for each year of the time series but to match on the average over the periods. It is why for pre-1960 periods, the blue line is above the black line while for the periods of1960-1970, the blue line is below the black line. Our conjecture on the reason for the irregular pattern of actual China in pre-1973 periods is that the government had been in a population policy struggling during this period [ 44 ] and the after-effect of the great fluctuations caused by China's Great Leap Forward famine (1958–1962). For example, right after the promotion of birth control policy in 1957, the birth control was catalyzed as anti-government in 1958. Not until 1962, birth control was encouraged again. Such changes of direction of the policy were very hard to simulate by finding the best comparable. Additionally, we identify the official announcement of "Later-Longer-Fewer Policy" in 1973 as the "shock." The informal introduction of such an idea started from 1971 when the encouragement of birth control was included as a "national" strategic policy. But only until 1973, the policy was announced officially with details. This explains why the SynthChina with FP 73&79 is already above actual China in 1973.

One interesting observation is that the TFR of Synth China with 1973 shock but without 1979 shock is lower than the observed TFR since 2003. Combining with the fact that the TFR reported in the Sixth Census in 2010 is lower than the TFR of Synth China, this appears to be providing indirect evidence on the common suspicion that the statistics on fertility rate might be “too low” and therefore the fertility effect of the 1979 policy could have been overstated.

Next, we apply the permutation test to evaluate the significance and robustness of the estimations. To do this, we produce a simulated sample of 500 countries by randomly drawing with replacement from the actual sample of 63 countries with China being excluded. Each country is treated as if it were China and is subjected to the 1973 and 1979 shocks. We construct the synthetic TFRs by following the same procedure carried out for Synth China. For each year, we calculate 500 simulated gaps between actual and synthetic TFRs, as shown in Fig 2 . The gaps for the simulated countries are represented by the grey lines, while the 95% confidence intervals by the red lines. The solid line denotes the gap between actual and Synth China, which is well below the lower bound of the 95% confidence interval from 1973 to 1979, indicating a significant reduction impact from the 1973 shock ( Fig 2 ). Meanwhile, the TFR gap between actual and Synth China stays within the confidence interval from 1980 onwards, implying that the 1979 shock had no significant impact ( Fig 2 ).

(A)Permutation test with 1973 policy–gap between true TFR and synthetic TFR. (B) Permutation test with 1979 policy–gap between true TFR and synthetic TFR.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220170.g002

Population projection is carried out by using Spectrum 10 , wherein the actual TFR was replaced by the synthetic TFR from 1979 to 2015.

As Fig 1 and Fig 2 show, had China not implemented its later-longer-fewer set of population control measures in 1973, the fall in TFR would have been much shallower. Translating this into total population, this would amount to a difference of around 85 million by the end of the 1970s ( Fig 3 ). The impact of the second ‘shock,' namely the introduction of the stricter control measures in 1979, appears to be much more muted. While there are differences in the 1980s as a result of the reform involving the regulation on marriage age, the TFR for Synth China and actual China are broadly in sync from the early 1990s. In terms of total population difference, Synth China is some 70 million lower than actual China by 2015, as shown in Fig 3 . As discussed above, this puzzling outcome of the second shock might be due to the overstating tendency of the fertility statistics. Based on the permutation tests shown in Fig 2 , we can conclude that the 1973 policy significantly reduced the population by 85 million, while the 1979 policy does not have a statistically significant impact.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220170.g003

Furthermore, we use a bootstrap strategy to get the confidence interval for the population estimates assuming without the shock of 1973 policy. We randomly drew 500 sub-samples with the size of 90% of the original sample without replacement. For each sub-sample, we repeated the synthetic control approach to search for the best synthetic China in terms of TFR. Among the 500 subsamples, two samples cannot converge. Therefore, in the end, we have 498 Synthetic China. We further get the 5% lower and upper bounds of TFRs among simulated Synthetic China. Building on the 5% lower and upper bounds of TFRs, we further calculate the resulted population, with which to compare the actual population and get the corresponding reduced population. The lower and upper bounds of the reduced population serve as the 90% confidence interval of Synthetic China in terms of the population without 1973 policy shock. The corresponding reduction of the population associated with the 1973 policy is between 60 and 94 million.

As shown in Table 2 , the countries used to construct Synth China differed significantly between the 1973 and 1979 shocks. Before the 1973 shock, the greatest contribution was made by India (with a weight of 36.9%), a country that implemented a weaker family planning system and was characterized by high fertility throughout the 1970s [ 45 ]. Jordan, Thailand, Ireland, Egypt, and Korea came as the second to the sixth most comparable countries to China. All of them, except Ireland, had family planning policies. Jordan started family planning measures in the 1980s [ 46 ]; Thailand had done three rounds of family planning measures starting from 1963 to 1980 [ 47 ]; Egypt implemented three rounds of family planning measures in 1966, 1970, and 1979 [ 48 ]; and the family planning policy started in Korea in 1961 and lasted until the 1980s [ 49 ]. Even without any institutional background information, the synthetic control model has been able to select countries with family planning programs automatically.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220170.t002

In the period 1973 to 1979, Korea overtook India as the country that most resembled China (75.2%). While the GDP per capita was considerably different between these two countries in this period (even in the current period), in the 1980s, they shared similarities in terms of the other variables not included in the model, including the GDP growth rate and the presence of an authoritarian political regime [ 50 , 51 ]. Furthermore, the Korean family planning system was extraordinarily comprehensive and was founded on new social norms around family size, as well as the development of rural areas in general [ 52 ]. Thailand still played an important role with a contribution of 16% to Synth China.

Robustness check

We further carried out several robustness checks by including the add-on policy intervention or altering the data coverage.

We examined first the impact of the commonly acknowledged temporary relaxation of the one-child policy during the late 1980s until the beginning of 1990s by using 1991 as another intervention year (Table B and Fig A in S1 File ). No significant impact was found.

A second robustness check done was performed by extending the coverage of the dataset. The baseline dataset of 64 countries used in the analysis was constructed by excluding countries with any missing value for the input and output variables from 1955 to 2010. Therefore, there is a possibility that countries sharing great similarities with China were excluded because of unavailable GDP per capita data in 1955 and onwards. The GDP per capita data were obtained from PWT 9.0, which is mostly accepted as one of the most reliable and complete sources of GDP data, especially when comparison across countries is required. To examine whether such exclusions would alter our conclusion, we revised our data construction by relaxing the time coverage requirement and allowing an unbalanced dataset for each shock. That is, if the input variables of a country for the required years by the Synthetic Control Method were available, we included it in the dataset. For example, countries previously excluded from our baseline model because of missing data on GDP per capita from 1955 to 1964 were included for assessing the impact of 1973 shock, and the availability of the GDP per capita data was only required from 1965 to 1973. It resulted in a dataset containing 103 countries for the 1973 shock and 123 countries for the 1979 shock (Tables C and D in S1 File ). Consistent with our baseline results, there was a significant decline in the TFR associated with the 1973 shock but insignificant impact with the 1979 shock (Table E and Fig B in S1 File ).

The final main robustness check done is restricting the coverage of countries in the dataset. We selected 25 countries as a focus group that had been subjectively recognized by previous literature as having similar fertility behavior as China (Table F in S1 File ). The focus group dataset with available data consisted of 17 countries for the 1973 shock and 20 countries for the 1979 shock. India, Indonesia, and Thailand were selected for Synth China in evaluating the 1973 shock and Korea, and Thailand was selected for Synth China in evaluating the 1979 shock, which was fewer than in our baseline analysis (Table G in S1 File ). Interestingly, the permutation test showed that even for the 1973 shock, the gap between the TFR of Synth China and actual TFR is located within the 95% interval. This indicates the insignificant impact of the 1973 shock. However, since there were only 16 countries used to do the random draw for the 500 paths, the variation contained in the permutation test is very limited, which weakened the reliability of the test (Fig C in S1 File ). The lower bound of the 95% confidence interval was dominated by Korea. Korea experienced a much sharper decline in TFR in the 1970s. Excluding Korea, China had the largest gap in the TFR.

As a robustness check, we also replace the TFRs used in our analysis with the UN-provided interpolated annual TFRs. The result is consistent with our baseline findings (see Table H and Fig D in S1 File ).

Limitations and conclusions

Of course, our study has various limitations. Firstly, from a data perspective, it is arguable that the veracity evidence derived for China–and, indeed, reconstructed for other countries–over the past seven decades is to be open to interpretation. This potential challenge is acknowledged and would, indeed, affect any and all studies of Chinese population history. However, the main argument of the likely impact of these two shocks still holds. Secondly, by considering China as a national unit, we do not disaggregate and consider the impact of the interventions (and policy differentials) at the sub-national unit. For example, it may be that the 1979 intervention had a more significant impact in one province than in others, dependent on the social and economic conditions of that region, coupled with the particular ‘history’ of birth control policies there. By considering only the aggregate level, we lose this granularity. Such an exercise would be a fruitful future avenue of research. The final criticism is a more holistic one. Is the size, complexity, the political, and economic system of China so unique that it is possible to create a ‘synthetic China’ at all? For sure, China is ‘different’ to most, if not all, countries of the world. However, the principle of the synthetic control approach is simply to draw similarities from other places if and where they exist. In this way, such an approach is more systematic, transparent, and viable than simply drawing on a single country comparator or a basket of other regions. Indeed, it could be argued that all possible units of analysis (countries, regions, towns) are ‘unique’ in their own way.

In this paper, we used the synthetic control method to assess the impact of the "One-Child" policy in China. Our findings strongly suggest that had China followed a standard development trajectory combined with the continuation of its comprehensive population control policies introduced in 1973 (‘later-longer-fewer'), the decline in the TFR and hence total population size would have been similar under the conditions of the stricter one-child policy and its various reforms thereafter. While the policies implemented in 1973 were restrictive in terms of spacing, timing and the quantum total number of children, and were also stricter than almost any other contemporary family planning program, they were, undoubtedly, less restrictive than what followed.

The implications of this study are two-fold. Firstly, by suggesting that the impact of the birth control policies may have been exaggerated in the past, we can better understand why the response to their relaxation has been relatively muted–or, at least, well below popular expectation. Secondly: it is impossible to ignore the fact that the strict birth control policies introduced in 1979 brought with them numerous negative and possibly unforeseen consequences. As well as the sanctioned activities and corrupt abuses which occurred within the birth control policy framework, the policies have been linked to the highly skewed sex ratio [ 53 ], the presence of millions of shidu fumu families who have lost their only child [ 54 ] as well as other challenges in both the development of family systems and individual behavior. The long-term psychological consequences of prioritizing one-child families have yet to be fully explored, not least in the context of possible efforts to spur childbearing in the future.

In this context, our analysis suggests that the population control policies implemented from 1979 have no significant demographic effect compared to a looser operationalization of population control and economic development. An important lesson for other countries that are planning to introduce population controls: the stricter controls might not be the effective one.

Supporting information

S1 file. appendix..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220170.s001

S2 File. Program and data.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220170.s002

Acknowledgments

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The authors are responsible for any remaining errors in the paper.

The authors would like to thank Ma. Christina F. Epetia for her excellent research assistance.

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How does the one child policy impact social and economic outcomes?

A strict policy on fertility affects every aspect of economic life

National University of Singapore, Singapore, and IZA, Germany

Elevator pitch

The 20th century witnessed the birth of modern family planning and its effects on the fertility of hundreds of millions of couples around the world. In 1979, China formally initiated one of the world’s strictest family planning programs—the “one child policy.” Despite its obvious significance, the policy has been significantly understudied. Data limitations and a lack of detailed documentation have hindered researchers. However, it appears clear that the policy has affected China’s economy and society in ways that extend well beyond its fertility rate.

Key findings

Due to large variation in how the one child policy was implemented across regions and ethnicities, researchers are able to exploit natural variation in their analyses, which makes empirical results reliable.

Strictness of policy implementation is associated with promotion incentives for local leaders.

The one child policy significantly curbed population growth, though there is no consensus on the magnitude.

Under the policy, households tried to have additional children without breaking the law; some unintended consequences include higher reported rates of twin births and more Han-minority marriages.

There is no solid evidence that the one child policy contributed to human capital accumulation through the traditional “quantity–quality” trade-off channel.

Current economic studies mainly focus on short-term effects, while the long-term or lagged effects are substantially understudied; thus, statements about consequences and suggestions for policy designs are still missing.

The one child policy is associated with significant problems, such as an unbalanced sex ratio, increased crime, and individual dissatisfaction toward the government.

Author's main message

China’s one child policy is possibly the largest social experiment in the history of the human race. The behavior responses to the policy offer important insights for other studies in labor, development, and public economics. To date, researchers have found that a series of outcomes, such as a lower fertility rate, an unbalanced sex ratio at birth, and higher human capital, are potentially associated with the policy. However, the answers to many important questions are far from satisfactory, and some (e.g. the long-term effects on lifecycle outcomes) have received little attention.

The 20th century included the inception of modern family planning, which restricted the fertility of hundreds of millions of couples around the world. Due to concerns about the world’s unprecedented rate of population growth in the mid-20th century, some aid agencies and international organizations began to support the establishment of family planning programs. About 40 years later, in the mid-1990s, large-scale family planning programs were active in 115 countries.

China’s “one child policy” (OCP) is the largest among the world’s family planning programs. In the 1970s, after two decades of explicitly encouraging population growth, policymakers in China began enacting a series of measures to curb it. The OCP was formally initiated in 1979 and firmly established across the country in 1980. It was the first time that family planning policy became formal law in China. Differing from birth control policies in many other countries, the OCP assigned a compulsory general “one-birth” quota to each couple, though its implementation has varied considerably across regions for different ethnicities at different times. The policy affected millions of couples and lasted more than 30 years. According to the World Bank, the fertility rate in China dropped from 2.81 in 1979 to 1.51 in 2000. The reduced fertility rate is likely to have affected the Chinese labor market profoundly.

Despite its grand scope, due to data limitations, the literature on the OCP is relatively small. This article reviews some of the recent studies on the topic, with a focus on the policy’s potential social and economic consequences, including consequences related to fertility, sex ratios, and education, as well as individual behavior responses, such as changes to reported twin births and interethnic marriages. By comparing the results of the existing literature and ongoing studies in China to those in other countries, it appears that the OCP has had a large and persistent impact on many aspects of society. Investigating these impacts may shed light on related issues in other realms of research, such as economics, demographics, and sociology.

Discussion of pros and cons

Variations in ocp implementation.

In 1979, the Chinese government formally initiated the OCP to alleviate social, economic, and environmental problems such as the high unemployment rate and scarcity of land resources. In recognition of diverse demographic and socio-economic conditions across China, the central government issued “Document 11” in February 1982 which allowed provincial governments to issue specific and locally adjusted regulations. Two years later, the central government issued “Document 7” which further stipulated that regulations regarding birth control were to be made in accordance with local conditions and were to be approved by the provincial Standing Committee of the People’s Congress and provincial-level governments. This document devolved responsibility from the central government to the local and provincial governments.

As opposed to many family planning policies in other countries, the OCP was compulsory rather than voluntary. As the name suggests, the policy restricted a couple to having only one child. However, there were some exemptions. The birth quota varied according to residence (urban/rural) and ethnicity (Han/non-Han). Since Han ethnicity is by far the largest in China, accounting for 93% of the population, the policy mainly restricted the fertility of people with Han ethnicity. In general, Han households in urban regions were only allowed to have one child, while most households in rural areas could have a second child if their first was female (this exception is called the “one-and-a-half-child policy”). Meanwhile, in most regions, households of non-Han ethnicity were allowed to have two or three children, regardless of gender.

A frequently used measure in studies of the OCP is the average monetary penalty rate for one unauthorized birth in the province-year from 1979 to 2000. The OCP regulatory fine (which is called the “social child-raising fee” in China, and for brevity is referred to as the “policy fine” in this article) is formulated in multiples of annual income. Though the monetary penalty is only one aspect of the policy, and the government may take other administrative actions (e.g. loss of party membership or employment), it is still a good proxy for the policy because an increase in fines is usually associated with other stricter policies. The Illustration shows the pattern of policy fines from 1980 to 2000 in selected provinces and nationwide.

At the very beginning of the OCP, Vice Premier Muhua Chen proposed that it would be necessary to pass new legislation imposing penalties on unauthorized births. However, subnational leaders faced practical difficulties in collecting penalties in addition to resistance and complaints from the populace. For example, Guangdong province received more than 5,000 letters complaining about the implementation of the OCP in 1984. In response, the central government fully authorized the provincial governments to determine their own “tax rates” for excessive births with the issuance of Document 7 in 1984. Because local governments were more concerned about social stability than the central government, they had little incentive to design a high penalty rate. Consistent with the Illustration , some local governments even lowered penalty rates after 1984, and, until 1989, there were few changes in fertility penalties.

A major change in fine rates occurred at the end of the 1980s though, when the central government linked the success of fertility control to promotions for local officials. As stated in the book Governing China’s Population : “Addressing governors in spring 1989 Li Peng (current premier) said that population remained in a race with grain, the outcome of which would affect the survival of the Chinese race. To achieve subnational compliance, policy must be supplemented with more detailed management by objectives (ME 890406). At a meeting on birth policy in the premier’s office, Li Peng explained that such targets should be ‘evaluative’” [2] .

In March 1991, to show resoluteness, the central government listed family planning among the three basic state policies in China’s Eighth Five-Year Plan passed by the National People’s Council. The Eighth Five-Year Plan explicitly set a goal of reducing the natural growth rate of the country’s population to less than 1.25% on average during the following decade. To achieve such a challenging objective, national leaders employed a “responsibility system” to induce subnational or provincial officials to set high fine rates.

During the short period between 1989 and 1992, over half of the country’s provinces (16 out of 30) saw a significant increase in their fine rate, with the average rate increasing from 1.0 to 2.8 times a household’s yearly income. Indeed, 16 of the 21 significant increases in the policy’s history (i.e. increases of more than one times a household’s income) occurred during this period.

There is a strong correlation between increases in fine rates and the incidence of government successions. Among the 16 significant increases, 12 happened during the first two years of new provincial governors’ tenures. Governors who instituted fine increases had higher chances of being promoted than their peers, and several rose to significant heights within the central government. In addition, provincial governors who increased fertility fines tended to be younger. The average age of these 16 provincial governors was 56, which was significantly lower than the average age of other provincial governors (59 years). These numbers suggest that the promotion incentive for provincial governors could be a major driving force for the changes in fertility fines. This is also consistent with the premise that the incentive to raise fine rates depends on a governor’s personal characteristics, such as inauguration time and age.

The amount collected via the policy fine was not made public until recently: the total was about 20 billion RMB yuan (US$ 3.3 billion) among 24 provinces that reported fine rates in 2012. For example, Guangdong, one of the richest provinces in China, collected 1.5 billion yuan in 2012. Meanwhile, as a comparison, total local government expenditure on compulsory schooling in the province was 10.5 billion.

Empirical approaches to identify the effects of the OCP

A recent review of the literature summarizes four empirical approaches to identify the effects of the OCP [3] .

The first approach uses the initial year of the policy, 1979, as a cutoff and compares the birth behaviors of women before and after implementation of the OCP. Under this approach, observations before 1979 form the control group and those after 1979 the treatment group. In general, this approach assumes there would be no change in the outcome variable (e.g. birth rate) after 1979 if there was no fertility restriction.

The second approach compares the outcomes of Han Chinese and minorities before and after policy implementation in a difference-in-differences framework. Under this approach, minorities are used as the control group and Han people as the treatment group. This methodology requires that the changes in outcome variables of Han and minorities be the same without the OCP and assumes that minorities’ outcomes are not affected by the OCP. However, this requires a case-by-case analysis and one needs to be careful when drawing causal interpretations. For example, because Han-minority couples are allowed to give birth to a second child in certain regions (as shown in Figure 1 ), Han people have stronger incentives to marry minorities to obtain the extra birth quota. One direct consequence is a higher Han-minority marriage rate in regions with this preferential policy, as shown in Figure 2 .

The third approach exploits the cross-sectional and temporal variations on fines for an illegal birth. As noted before, the fines change over time; it is thus plausible to exploit these variations to identify the effects of the fines. Unfortunately, there is no formal or accurate documentation for why the fines change. Furthermore, these changes may only reflect one aspect of the policy’s effects. Therefore, further justification is required to validate the use of fines as the main independent variable.

The fourth approach explores variation between the intensity of OCP implementation across different regions in combination with the differential length of exposure of different birth cohorts to the OCP. Specifically, this approach constructs a measure based on excess births to Han women over and above the one child rule in each region while controlling for pre-existing fertility and community socio-economic status. However, as noted in one recent study, this approach relies on the strong assumption that any unobserved region-specific shocks to fertility or other family outcomes over time are uncorrelated with the cross-sectional measure of the OCP enforcement intensity [3] .

It should be noted that these four approaches are not exclusive. Some ongoing projects are employing several of them at once. Given that official documentation on the policy is limited, researchers are likely to develop more empirical approaches in the future to address the current issues, such as data limitations, and gain a more complete understanding of the OCP.

Effects of the OCP on fertility and the sex ratio

Since the primary goal of the OCP was to restrict population growth, the first question to ask is whether it has been successful in this respect. The answer is generally yes, though the magnitude of its success varies according to different studies.

Some early studies investigated how fertility responded to the policy’s restrictions [4] . Their findings are consistent, in general. For example, it was found that a one standard deviation increase in the prevalence of contraceptives led to a 0.5 standard deviation decrease in the total fertility rate.

However, the findings in the more recent literature are mixed. For instance, one study used improved measures of policy to suggest that if earlier family planning policies had not been replaced by the OCP, fertility would still have declined below the replacement level, and that the additional effects of the OCP were fairly limited [5] . By contrast, a study from 2011 used two rounds of the Chinese Population Census and found that the OCP has had a large negative effect on fertility; the average effect on post-treatment cohorts’ probability of having a second child is as large as -11 percentage points [6] . Therefore, while scholars tend to agree that the OCP has had significant effects on fertility, determining the magnitude of these effects remains an important and unanswered question.

Another demographic outcome commonly investigated in the literature is sex ratio. Incidentally correlated with the introduction of the OCP, the sex ratio at birth (i.e. males to females) increased by 0.2 over the course of 25 years, from 0.95 in 1980 to 1.15 in 2005. This phenomenon has been termed “missing women” by Amartya Sen. Since there is a strong preference for male children in China, restrictions have led to parents selecting to have/not have a child based on the results of ultrasonography technology [7] . Because parents have been able to choose abortion instead of having a girl, many researchers argue that the OCP has contributed to the high sex ratio in China. One study exploited the regional and temporal variation in fines levied for unauthorized births and found that higher fine regimes are associated with higher ratios of males to females [1] . The results are especially true for the second or third births: a 100% increase in the fine rate is associated with a 0.8 and 2.3 percentage point increase in the probability of having a male child in the second and third births, respectively. One of the previously mentioned studies used a different methodology, but reached a similar finding [6] . The study suggests that the effect of the OCP accounts for about 57% and 54% of the total increase in sex ratios for the 1991–2000 and 2001–2005 birth cohorts, respectively.

The imbalanced sex ratio may help to explain some puzzling phenomena in China, such as a high saving rate. In turn, this can be viewed as a possible consequence of the OCP. For example, one study found that as the sex ratio rises, Chinese parents with a son increase their savings rate in order to improve their son’s relative attractiveness for marriage [8] . They find that the increase in the sex ratio from 1990 to 2007 can explain about 60% of the actual increase in the household savings rate during the same period.

Furthermore, the imbalanced sex ratio may lead to other serious social consequences, including increased crime. One study used the exogenous variation in sex ratio caused by the OCP to see its effect on crime and found an elasticity of crime with respect to the sex ratio of 16- to 25-year-olds of 3.4, suggesting that male sex ratios can account for one-seventh of the rise in crime [7] . The study proposes that one possible mechanism for this increase could be the adverse marriage market due to the unbalanced sex ratio.

Effects of the OCP on human capital accumulation

One established relationship between fertility and human capital accumulation is the child quantity–quality trade-off. However, many empirical economists have examined the relationship in the case of China and found mixed evidence. The OCP used birth quotas to control population growth. As such, it provides a potential external shock to the size of families and thus enables one to study causality between family size and children’s education.

One analysis used the plausibly exogenous changes in family size caused by relaxations in the OCP to estimate the effect of the number of children in a family on school enrollment for the first child [9] . Surprisingly, the results show that having an additional child increased the likelihood of school enrollment of the first child by about 16 percentage points, implying the relationship between quantity and quality is not a “trade-off,” but rather “complementary.” The author provides several explanations, including greater economies of scale, enhanced permanent income, and increased labor supply of mothers.

Taking an alternate approach, another study exploited the exogenous variation in twin births in different birth orders to estimate the potential gain in human capital by policy-induced compressed family size [10] . The authors used the policy’s characteristics to tell the story: producing twins on the first birth results in an exogenous shock to family size in urban regions, whereas having twins on the second birth represents an exogenous shock to family size in rural regions because parents in these areas are already allowed to have a second child. The results show a modest but positive effect of compressed family size induced by the OCP on human capital, as measured by health and education.

The above findings suggest that the effects of the OCP on human capital are not well established when only considering the quality–quantity trade-off. For example, a study from 2010 investigated the impact of fertility policies on the socio-economic status and labor supply of women aged 15–49 years in Colombia. The results suggest that women impacted by birth control policy during their teenage years are more likely to have higher education. One possible explanation is that people are more incentivized to achieve higher education if they expect to have lower fertility. As opposed to the quality–quantity trade-off, which only affects post-policy birth cohorts, the effects from lower fertility expectations may be present among those who were born before the policy’s implementation, but grew up during its tenure. This finding calls for further examination of the OCP’s impact on human capital accumulation. This is important because it suggests another explanation for how fertility affects economic growth.

Discussion on the OCP’s effects on human capital is still ongoing. The varied findings imply that the answer to the human capital question may depend on the individuals/cohorts examined and on the model specification employed. Although it is difficult to answer whether and to what extent the OCP increased human capital, the policy itself provides plausibly exogenous variations for future studies to examine.

Effects of the OCP on other family outcomes

Other outcomes, such as divorce, labor supply, and rural-to-urban migration have received less attention in the literature, though they are investigated in a recent study [3] . The results suggest that regions with stricter fertility policy enforcement tend to have a greater likelihood of divorce, higher male labor force participation rates, and more rural-to-urban migration; however, these effects are modest. A one standard deviation increase in policy enforcement (measured by excess fertility, as mentioned in the fourth approach presented previously) leads to a 0.015 percentage point higher divorce rate, a 0.12 percentage point higher male labor force participation rate, and a 0.8 percentage point higher rural-to-urban migration rate. The results suggest that lower birth rates may have some unintended consequences that scholars and policymakers need to consider.

Another interesting phenomenon is the increased rate of twin births. When a couple is allowed one child, the only legitimate way to have two children is to give birth to twins, which is largely out of the control of the couple. For those who do not give birth to twins, an alternative is to report fake twins, that is, to register two consecutive siblings as twins. Interestingly, the rate of twin births reported in population censuses more than doubled between the late 1960s and the early 2000s, from 3.5 to 7.5 per 1,000 births. A recent study suggests that at least one-third of the increase in twins since the 1970s can be explained by the OCP [11] . Since couples can intentionally have twin births to bypass the OCP (i.e. by reporting fake twins or taking fertility drugs to have multiple births), the distribution of reported twins in China may not be random.

Limitations and gaps

One limitation of studying the impact of the OCP may be the measures employed. Because this policy was implemented essentially at once across the entire country, little variation exists in the timing. Because of this, many scholars have relied on the differential treatment of Han and minority ethnicities to evaluate the policy’s effects. However, this is not a perfect approach because different characteristics across the ethnicities may be correlated with the time trends, thereby biasing the results.

In addition, local governments usually had a “policy package” when implementing the OCP, which often included different penalties for illegal births for people from different backgrounds. For example, when an illegal birth is observed, those with party membership may lose it, and those hired by the public sector or collective firms may lose their jobs. These measures may go hand in hand with policy fines, but they are hard to quantify.

Furthermore, since the literature relates behavior response to social welfare, economists usually examine individuals’ behavioral responses to government policies to estimate the corresponding social welfare loss. However, no study has so far examined the corresponding welfare loss for fertility policies. To do this, researchers may need to build up a model and then analyze rich data sets to provide relevant empirical evidence. However, the difficulty in this regard originates from the lack of official documentation or details regarding the implementation of China’s OCP.

Finally, the current literature on the OCP mainly investigates the simultaneous or short-term effects. Specifically, it compares how individual behaviors differ before and after the implementation of the policy. However, there is little evidence on the long-term or lagged effects of the OCP. Take the study from 2010 as an example, whose results suggest that women growing up under birth restrictions may have higher socio-economic status [12] . Considering this, the lower fertility expectations resulting from the OCP may lead to higher education, and this potentially has profound and long-lasting effects on productivity and economic growth. However, this is largely unknown in the current literature.

Summary and policy advice

As the largest social experiment in human history, the OCP has restricted the fertility of millions of couples in China for more than three decades. This article has reviewed outcomes presented in the literature about the OCP, with a focus on its intended and unintended consequences, including fertility, sex ratio, human capital, twin births, and interethnic marriages. The results suggest that the policy has had large and long-lasting impacts on many aspects of both the economy and society, though debates persist on certain topics. The current findings also provide possible directions for insightful future studies.

It is hard to conclude whether the OCP has been good or bad in general. It has curbed the potentially problematic population boom in China, though researchers disagree as to how much of that should be attributed to the OCP, and it has possibly increased human capital accumulation. But, it has also brought with it problems, such as an unbalanced sex ratio, increased crime, and individual dissatisfaction toward the government. Since 2010, the government has loosened the policy restrictions. In late 2013, China’s government started the “selective two child policy.” This policy allows couples to have two children if one member of the couple has no siblings. In November 2015, the government ended the OCP and started the “universal two child policy.” Although the OCP has now been terminated, there are many important questions that have yet to be answered. Until considerable further research is done, it is difficult to extrapolate lessons from China’s experience to inform future policy decisions.

Acknowledgments

The author thanks an anonymous referee and the IZA World of Labor editors for many helpful suggestions on earlier drafts. Previous work of the author contains a larger number of background references for the material presented here and has been used intensively in all major parts of this article [11] .

Competing interests

The IZA World of Labor project is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity . The author declares to have observed these principles.

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The end of China’s one-child policy

Subscribe to this week in foreign policy, feng wang , feng wang former brookings expert, professor - sociology, university of california, irvine, professor - fudan university in shanghai baochang gu , and bg baochang gu yong cai yc yong cai.

March 30, 2016

Content from the Brookings-Tsinghua Public Policy Center is now archived . Since October 1, 2020, Brookings has maintained a limited partnership with Tsinghua University School of Public Policy and Management that is intended to facilitate jointly organized dialogues, meetings, and/or events.

Starting on January 1, 2016, all Chinese couples are allowed to have two children. This marks the end of China’s one-child policy, which has restricted themajority of Chinese families to only one child for the last 35 years. The process of ending the one-child policy occurred in three steps over the past three years. It began inMarch 2013, when China merged the National Population and Family Planning Commission with the Ministry of Health to create a new National Health and Family Planning Commission. Eight months later, in November 2013, China announced a partial policy relaxation that allowed couples to have two children if one parent is an only child. Surprisingly, among the estimated more than 11 million couples who were eligible to have a second child under the new rule, only 1.69 million had applied as of August 2015, accounting for 15.4 percent of such couples. The third and final step took place in October 2015 to allow all couples to have two children in 2016.

With this latest change, the Chinese state has begun to withdrawits hand fromcontrolling couples’ reproductive decisions. An even more significant change that was announced as part of the third step is that couples are no longer required to seek approval from the government to have a child, whether the first or second, but only to register the birth afterward.While the announcement stops short of lifting all restrictions, and the official language still contains the rhetoric of “continuing the basic state policy of birth control,” it would appear to be only a matter of time before Chinese families will be free to choose when and how many children to have.

The one-child policy was designed in 1980 as a temporary measure to put a brake on China’s population growth and to facilitate economic growth under a planned economy that faced severe shortages of capital, natural resources, and consumer goods. However, the answer to China’s underdevelopment did not come from its extreme birth control measures, but from reform policies that loosened state control over the economy. China’s economic boom over the last few decades has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, sent almost 100 million young men and women to college, and inspired generations of Chinese, both young and old, to purse their economic goals. As observed in many other countries and societies, socioeconomic and cultural transformations accelerated the pace of fertility decline. By the turn of the new century, China’s fertility was well below the replacement level, and China began to face the mounting pressures associated with continued low fertility. To continue the one-child policy within such a demographic context was clearly no longer defensible.

Unlike the rushed launch of the one-child policy in 1980, which was primarily a political decision based on little understanding of demography and society, researchers have played amuchmore active and meaningful role in calling for changes to end the policy. Scholars from leading institutions of population research in China formed an academic team in 2001. Their studies of China’s new demographic realities and the harmful consequences of continuing the ill-conceived one-child policy, and their three collective appeals to Chinese policymakers to relax and to end the one-child policy, in April 2004, January 2009, and most recently in January 2015, served as the basis for policy debates in China. Their efforts, along with efforts from many other sectors of society, informed the public of China’s new demographics and corrected the many misconceptions about population growth and the rationale for the one-child policy.

Yet, China’s policy change came at least a decade later than it should have. Changes to phase out the policy have been delayed because of leaderswho havemade population control part of their political legitimacy and a bureaucracy that has grown increasingly entrenched in the course of policy enforcement. In addition, the Chinese public has been thoroughly indoctrinated by the Malthusian fear of unchecked population growth and by a social discourse that has erroneously blamed population growth for virtually all of the country’s social and economic problems.

China’s one-child policy will be remembered as one of the costliest lessons of misguided public policymaking. Contrary to the claims of some Chinese officials, much of China’s fertility decline to date was realized prior to the launch of the one-child policy, under a much less strict policy in the 1970s calling for later marriage, longer birth intervals, and fewer births. In countries that had similar levels of fertility in the early 1970s without extreme measures such as the one-child policy, fertility also declined, and some achieved a level similar to China’s today. While playing a limited role in reducing China’s population growth, the one-child policy in the 35 years of its existence has created tens of millions, perhaps as many as 100 million, of China’s 150 million one-child families today. For these families, the harm caused by the policy is long-termand irreparable. Population aging in China is a burden not only for Chinese society as the support ratio between the working-age population and the elderly declines, but also for many of working age who are only children. Furthermore, China has had three decades of abnormal sex As a result, China now has a large pool of surplus men estimated at between 20 and 40 million.

The lukewarm response of couples to the partial relaxation in the second step largely confirmed findings from a pilot study in Jiangsu Province in 2007–2009 that very low fertility in China is more the result of choice than of policy restrictions. Other societies in EastAsia, like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, andHong Kong, have had little success in boosting their lowfertility evenwith pronatalist and pro-family policies. The end ofChina’s one-child policy therefore is unlikely to increase births in China by a significant number in the years to come.

What China has practiced under the one-child policy is clearly not voluntary family planning. To enforce the policy, China carried out massive sterilization and abortion campaigns. In 1983 alone, a year with about 21 million births in China, 14.4 million abortions, 20.7 million (predominantly female) sterilizations, and 17.8 million IUD insertions were performed. A large proportion of these procedures were involuntary.

Future generations will likely look back at China’s one-child policy with bewilderment and disbelief. To many it will be incomprehensible why, of all countries that faced the challenge of rapid populationgrowth inthe second half of the twentieth century, onlyChinawent to such an extreme; incomprehensible why in a society based on respect for the family, kin, and filial piety, the government enforced a policy that effectively terminated many kin ties for at least a generation; incomprehensible why China instituted such a policy after the country had already experienced substantial fertility decline; and incomprehensible why China waited so long to end such a harmful policy. The costly lessons to be learned are not only in politics and public policymaking, but also in how parts of the academic community informed and misinformed public policymaking.

While there are lessons to be learned from the misadventure of the one-child policy, it is worthwhile to recognize the importance of voluntary family planning services in reducing and averting unplanned childbearing and especially in improving the lives of women and children and in increasing gender equality. Access to safe, voluntary family planning services is a basic human right. The rapid fertility decline in China and around the world over the last half century would not have been possible without family planning services. Even in China, the government began to realize the central role of women in reproductive decisions and started to pay attention to the quality of family planning services in the 1990s. With the ending of the one-child policy, there is a clear and urgent need for re-education of China’s family planning and health service apparatus toward empowering couples to make informed choices about their fertility. China should continue providing free and safe access to voluntary family planning services and keep its focus on quality and on women’s reproductive health.

This piece was originally published in the journal of Studies in Family Planning .

Foreign Policy

August 2, 2024

Linda Peek Schacht

July 30, 2024

Morley Winograd, Michael Hais

July 29, 2024

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section China's One Child Policy

Introduction, historical and cultural roots of china’s population, family, and child-rearing.

• General Works on Population Trends and Policies after 1949
• Prelude to the One-Child Policy: The 1970s and the “Later, Longer, Fewer” Campaign
• Overviews of the One-Child Policy
• How and Why the One-Child Policy Was Launched
• Changing Policies and Enforcement in the One-Child Era
• One-Child Policy Enforcement and Human Rights Abuses
• The Advantages and Disadvantages of Being a Chinese Singleton
• The Role of the One-Child Policy in China’s Dramatic Fertility Decline
• Infant Abandonment, Orphanage Care, and Adoption of Abandoned Chinese Children
• Distortion of Sex Ratios at Birth: Missing Girls and “Bare Sticks”
• Looming Demographic Challenges: Rapid Population Aging and Young Worker Shortages
• The Ending of the One-Child Policy in 2015
• The Demographic, Historical, and Political Legacy of China’s One-Child Policy

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China's One Child Policy by Martin K. Whyte LAST REVIEWED: 19 April 2024 LAST MODIFIED: 19 April 2024 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199791231-0221

For centuries, China has had the world’s largest population, although it will soon lose that title to India. When Mao Zedong and his colleagues seized national power in 1949, they were not sure how many Chinese there were (the first modern census was not conducted until 1953), and Mao initially argued that having a large and rapidly increasing population was a blessing for China, rather than a curse. However, the challenges of managing such a large and poor country soon changed the official view, and during some intervals in the 1950s and 1960s, China carried out voluntary family planning campaigns to try to reduce the birth rate. However, those campaigns were largely ineffective, with the only notable decline in fertility during those decades produced by the Great Leap Forward–induced mass famine of 1959–1961, not family planning efforts. As of 1970 the projected number of babies the average Chinese mother would have in her lifetime (termed the total fertility rate [TFR]) was still close to six. (China’s cities, where less than 20 percent of the population lived at the time, is an exception to these generalizations, with the 1960s family planning campaign playing some role in reducing the urban TFR in 1970 to 3.2.) Early in the 1970s, when Mao was still in charge (he died in 1976), China made a dramatic shift from voluntary family planning to mandatory birth limits under the slogan, “later (marriage ages), longer (birth intervals), and fewer” (births—no more than two babies for urban families and three for rural families). The “later, longer, fewer” campaign was enforced very strictly, using many of the coercive measures that later became notorious during the one-child campaign, and China’s fertility rate fell dramatically, to less than three per mother by the end of the decade. Despite this success, in 1980 the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched an even more demanding and coercive campaign that attempted for the next thirty-five years to limit Chinese families to having only one child. The fertility rate actually went up in the early 1980s but then began to decline again, reaching sub-replacement fertility (TFR = 2.1) by the early 1990s. Most experts estimated that China’s TFR fluctuated in the 1.4 to 1.6 range between 2000 and 2015, although some analysts have calculated slightly higher estimates. (The subsequent decline in births, discussed in the final section of this essay, reduced China’s TFR in 2020 to 1.3 according to the census that year, approaching the very low fertility of the richest countries in East Asia.) The CCP in late 2015 decided to end the one-child limit, with Chinese families since January 1, 2016 allowed to have two children (raised to three children in 2021). Debates about the controversial one-child policy have spawned a large literature that examines many issues, including the reasons the CCP launched this campaign, how effective it was in reducing birth rates further, what human rights abuses resulted, how child-rearing and children have been affected, and in what ways Chinese society and the people of China have benefited or have been harmed by the demographic distortions produced by mandatory, state-enforced birth limits.

The backdrop for China’s unprecedented effort to enforce a one-child policy after 1980 is a strong set of family and child-rearing traditions stretching back millennia as well as debates about that country’s population dynamics and trends over the centuries. Baker 1979 presents a good summary of the literature on patterns of Chinese family life and kinship relations prior to 1949. Thornton and Lin 1994 provides an overview of family change patterns in Taiwan that can be compared with the literature on family change in mainland China. Ikels 2004 contains a series of essays focusing on the role of the central Chinese child-rearing value of filial piety in contemporary East Asian societies. Saari 1990 uses historical sources to convey how rising Western influence was challenging traditional child-rearing patterns and family authority relations in China around the turn of the 20th century. Kessen 1975 is a trip report made by a delegation of American child psychologists who visited China in 1973, prior to the start of the one-child policy. Whyte 2003 presents analyses based upon a survey of parent–adult child relations in a middle range Chinese city in 1994. Lau 1996 is a collection of essays on contemporary patterns of child-rearing in the People’s Republic of China and in the Chinese diaspora. Taken together, these studies convey a picture of China’s traditional family patterns having changed in substantial ways prior to the launching of the one-child policy, but with families still displaying distinctive patterns even today compared with their counterparts in Western societies (e.g., with higher likelihood of living with parents after marriage). In terms of historical trends in China’s population size, Ho 1958 is an early account by a historian of patterns of growth of the Chinese population over many centuries prior to the 20th century. Hajnal 1982 presents data and theorizes in support of the conventional view that in premodern times families in northwestern Europe were distinctive compared to families in Asia, particularly by more rationally adjusting their fertility levels to prevailing economic conditions. More recently, Lee and Wang 1999 uses historical demographic records from Qing Dynasty China to challenge the Malthusian view of Chinese families advanced by Hajnal and others.

Baker, Hugh. Chinese Family and Kinship . New York: Columbia University Press, 1979.

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-86123-1

This is a wide-ranging overview by an experienced anthropological fieldworker of patterns of family life and kinship relations in China prior to 1949 and how they compare and contrast with family patterns in Western societies.

Hajnal, John. “Two Kinds of Preindustrial Household Formation System.” Population and Development Review 8 (1982): 449–494.

DOI: 10.2307/1972376

In this influential article, Hajnal presents data comparing premodern family patterns in England and other countries in northwestern Europe with their counterparts in Asia, including China, leading him to conclude that in Europe changing economic conditions led families to adjust their marriage rate, age at marriage, and fertility, whereas in Asian societies pronatal values and institutions did not promote such “rational” adjustments, thus encouraging more rapid population growth in the East than in the West.

Ho Ping-Ti. Studies on the Population of China, 1368–1958 . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958.

In this early study, a distinguished historian assembles such estimates as were available at the time to present an overview of when and why China’s population grew from less than 100 million at the start of the Ming Dynasty to about 600 million by the 1950s. More recent and accurate data have largely superseded this work.

Ikels, Charlotte, ed. Filial Piety: Practice and Discourse in Contemporary East Asia . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004.

A set of essays, mostly by sociologists and anthropologists, detailing their investigations into what role the central Confucian value of filial piety (basically, the cultivation of extraordinary obligation and subordination by children even as adults to their parents and other elders) plays in contemporary East Asian societies, including China.

Kessen, William, ed. Childhood in China . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1975.

In 1973 a delegation of a dozen distinguished American child psychologists visited China and provided this report on their observations in the preschools and primary and secondary schools they visited, although they were unsuccessful in their efforts to meet Chinese child psychologists with whom they could discuss their observations.

Lau Sing, ed. Growing Up the Chinese Way: Chinese Child and Adolescent Development . Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 1996.

This collection of essays, mainly by child and social psychologists, presents recent research studies on many different aspects of child-rearing, parent–child relations, and school performance in China. Two of the essays in this volume deal specifically with comparing only children and children reared with siblings, and those essays are cited later in this review ( Falbo, et al. 1996 ; Wu 1996 , both cited under the Advantages and Disadvantages of Being a Chinese Singleton ).

Lee, James, and Wang, Feng. One Quarter of Humanity: Malthusian Mythology and Chinese Realities . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.

DOI: 10.4159/9780674040052

This prize-winning volume, by a historian and a demographer, analyzes data on Chinese family patterns and demographic behavior in the 19th century, leading to a revisionist view that even in premodern times, contra Hajnal and others, Chinese were as much or more “rational” in adjusting their childbearing to economic conditions than Western families and not more pronatal. The authors also contend that the share of the world’s population that is Chinese today is not any larger than it was 2000 years ago.

Saari, Jon. Legacies of Childhood: Growing Up Chinese in a Time of Crisis, 1890–1920 . Cambridge, MA: Harvard East Asian Monographs, 1990.

DOI: 10.2307/j.ctt1tg5mpf

A historian of China uses documentary and literary sources to examine the tensions and strains as Chinese parents and their children tried to adjust to rapid social change and Western influence at the turn of the 20th century.

Thornton, Arland, and Hui-Sheng Lin. Social Change and the Family in Taiwan . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.

The authors rely on multiple surveys conducted in Taiwan since the 1960s to present an overview of the patterns of change and continuity in Chinese family patterns on that island.

Whyte, Martin K., ed. China’s Revolutions and Intergenerational Relations . Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies, 2003.

A collection of essays based upon a survey conducted in the city of Baoding, Hebei Province, in 1994. In that survey a representative sample of older residents and one randomly selected grown child of each older respondent were both interviewed to examine current patterns of relations between older urban Chinese and their adult offspring. Some essays include comparisons with comparable surveys that had been conducted earlier in Taiwan.

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• Understanding the One-Child Policy

Enforcement

• Implications

Does China Still Have the One-Child Policy?

• Did China's One-Child Policy Increase Its Economic Growth?

Is China Encouraging the Birthrate Today?

What happened if you broke the one-child policy, the bottom line.

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What Was China's One-Child Policy? Its Implications and Importance

Adam Hayes, Ph.D., CFA, is a financial writer with 15+ years Wall Street experience as a derivatives trader. Besides his extensive derivative trading expertise, Adam is an expert in economics and behavioral finance. Adam received his master's in economics from The New School for Social Research and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in sociology. He is a CFA charterholder as well as holding FINRA Series 7, 55 & 63 licenses. He currently researches and teaches economic sociology and the social studies of finance at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

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The Chinese government implemented the one-child policy mandating that the vast majority of couples in the country could only have one child. The phrase “one-child policy,” used often outside China, can be a bit misleading: the one-child rule didn't apply to all, exceptions were frequently made, and local officials had discretion over how population limits were achieved. These collective efforts were nevertheless intended to alleviate the social, economic, and environmental problems associated with the country's rapidly growing population. The rule was introduced in 1979 and phased out in 2015.

Key Takeaways

• The “one-child policy” is a name given to Chinese government laws for controlling population growth. According to estimates, it prevented about 400 million births in the country.
• Introduced in 1979 and discontinued in 2015, the policy was enforced through a mix of incentives and sanctions.
• The one-child policy has had three important consequences for China's demographics: it reduced the fertility rate considerably, it skewed China's gender ratio because people preferred to abort or abandon their female babies, and resulted in a labor shortage given the increasing proportion of the population who were older adults.

Understanding China's One-Child Policy

The one-child policy refers to a set of laws implemented beginning in 1979 in response to explosive population growth that government officials feared would lead to a demographic disaster. China has a long history of encouraging birth control and family planning. In the 1950s, when population growth started to outpace the food supply, the government started promoting birth control.

However, by the late 1970s, China’s population was quickly approaching 1 billion, and the Chinese government considered ways to curb population growth. This effort began in 1979 with mixed results but was implemented more seriously and uniformly in 1980, as the government standardized the practice nationwide.

There were, however, exceptions for ethnic minorities, for those whose firstborn was labeled as disabled, and for rural families whose firstborn was not a boy. The policy was most effective in urban areas since those in China’s agrarian communities resisted it to a greater extent.

Initially, the one-child policy was meant to be a temporary measure, though, in the end, it may have prevented up to 400 million births. Ultimately, China ended its one-child policy after it became apparent that it might have been too effective: many Chinese were heading into retirement, and the nation’s population had too few young people to provide for the older population’s retirement and healthcare while sustaining continued economic growth.

The government-mandated policy was formally ended Oct. 29, 2015, after its rules had been slowly relaxed to allow more couples fitting certain criteria to have a second child. Now, all couples are allowed to have two children.

There were different methods of enforcement, including incentives and sanctions, that varied across China. For those who complied, there were financial incentives and preferential employment opportunities. For those who violated the policy, there were sanctions, economic and otherwise. At times, the government employed more draconian measures, including forced abortions and sterilization.

The one-child policy was officially discontinued in 2015. The efficacy of the policy itself, though, has been challenged, as it's typical that population growth generally slows as societies gain in income, as happened in China during this time. In China's case, as the birthrate declined, the death rate declined, too, and life expectancy increased.

One-Child Policy Implications

The one-child policy had serious implications for China's demographic and economic future. In the early 2020s, China's fertility rate stands at 1.6, among the lowest in the world. (The U.S. is at 1.7.)

China now has a considerable gender skew—there are roughly 3 to 4% more males than females in the country. With the implementation of the one-child policy and the preference for male children, China had a rise in the abortion of female fetuses, the number of baby girls left in orphanages, and even in infanticides of baby girls.

This continues to affect marriage and birthrates around the country. Fewer females means there were fewer women of childbearing age in China. The drop in birthrates meant fewer children, which occurred as death rates dropped and longevity rates rose. It is estimated that the share of adults ages 65 and older will have risen from just 12% to a projected 26% by 2050. Thus, older parents will be relying on their children to support them, and have fewer children to do so. This is compounded by the massive urbanization of China since 1980, with those living in urban areas increasing from 19% in 1980 to 60% in recent years. China is also facing a potential labor shortage and will have trouble supporting this aging population through its state services.

Finally, the policy led to the proliferation of undocumented, non-first-born children. Their status as undocumented makes it impossible to leave China legally, as they cannot register for a passport. They have no access to public education. Oftentimes, their parents were fined or removed from their jobs.

One-Child Policy FAQs

No. China reverted to a two-child policy after its one-child policy ended in 2015, and the restrictions were gradually loosened before its official end.

Did China's One-Child Policy Increase Its Economic Growth?

There's a chicken or egg quality to any answer: China's one-child policy, by initially reducing population growth, could have contributed to economic gains by creating a larger working-age population relative to children, which would have boosted productivity and savings. However, it's also the case that countries with increases in national wealth tend to have population growth that slows down. Thus, the increase in economic growth in China may have helped reduce the number of Chinese newborns over this time, not the other way around. Whatever the case, the long-term effects of these demographic shifts from about 1979 to 2015 include a shrinking labor force and a greater proportion of the population that is retired, posing challenges for continued economic growth and the social safety net.

Yes. China has implemented or increased parental tax deductions, family leave, housing subsidies for families, and spending on reproductive health and child care services to increase the national birthrate since ending the one-child policy formally in 2015. The Chinese government also promotes flexible work hours and work-from-home options for parents. Most interesting are policies one wouldn't consider related to the birthrate at first glance, such as banning private tutoring companies from profiting off teaching core subjects during weekends or holidays. By lowering educational pressure on children and this often costly financial load on parents, China is attempting to lower the burdens of parenting. With greater financial security, parents may feel better able to handle additional children. Another upshot? By reducing pressure academically, especially on weekends and holidays, families can spend more time together, thus fostering greater family connections.

Violators of China's one-child policy could be fined, forced to have abortions or sterilizations or lose their jobs.

China's one-child policy, a phrase used for a set of laws related to population growth implemented starting in 1979, represented one of the more draconian modern attempts to intervene in a country's rising demographics. While the population did slow, the policy also resulted in unintended consequences, such as an aging population, gender imbalance, and a shrinking workforce. Its discontinuation in 2015 and subsequent measures to encourage higher birth rates reflect China's complex challenges in balancing population control with sustainable economic and social development.

J.N. Wasserstrom. "China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know." Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pages 81-84.

Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. " China’s One Child Policy ." Page 1. 

National Library of Medicine. " The Effects of China’s Universal Two-Child Policy ."

Library of Congress. " China’s One Child Policy. "

David Howden and Yang Zhou. “ China’s One-Child Policy: Some Unintended Consequences .” Economic Affairs. 34/3. Pages 353-69.

The World Bank. " Fertility Rate, Total (Births per Woman) - China ."

Pew Research Center. " Without One-child Policy, China Still Might Not See Baby Boom, Gender Balance ."

Gao, Fang., Li, Xia. " From One to Three: China’s Motherhood Dilemma and Obstacle to Gender Equality ." Women. (2021.) Pages 252-266. 

Population Reference Bureau. " What Can We Learn From the World’s

Largest Population of Older People? "

United Nations. " Revision of World Urbanization Prospects ."

World Health Organization. " Ageing and Health in China ."

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Explainer | China’s one-child policy: what was it and what impact did it have?

• China’s one-child policy started in 1980 and was strictly enforced with punishments including fines for violators and often forced abortions
• China officially ended its one-child policy in January 2016 in favour of a two-child policy before it introduced a three-child policy in May 2021

What was China’s one-child policy?

China’s one-child policy was rolled out in 1980 by Deng Xiaoping and was strictly enforced after the population had increased to 969 million in 1980 from around 540 million in 1949.

It restricted most couples to only a single offspring, and for years authorities argued it was a key factor in supporting the country’s economic boom.

It was enforced by the National Health and Family Planning Commission, with a system of fines for violators and often forced abortions.

Civil servants and employees of government-affiliated organisations, including universities, risked losing their jobs if they were found to have had more than one child.

If parents did not pay a fine, second children could not be registered in the national household system, meaning they did not exist legally and so would not have access to social services like health care and education.

As late as in 2013, filmmaker Zhang Yimou and his wife Chen Ting were fined 7.48 million yuan for having three children.

The policy led to sex-selective abortions or infanticide targeting girls, because of a centuries-old social preference for boys.

National Health and Family Planning Commission spokesman Mao Qunan said the agency’s work had reduced the number of births in China over the years by “400 million”.

Rural families were already allowed two children if the first was a girl, while ethnic minorities were allowed an extra offspring, leading some to dub it a “one-and-a-half child” policy. Urban couples were also allowed to have a second child if the parents were both single children.

China 2020 census records slowest population growth in decades

What happened if a mother had twins?

The one-child policy was generally accepted to mean one birth per family, meaning if women gave birth to two or more children at the same time, they would not be penalised.

Various reports in Chinese and international media suggested that this loophole led mothers to take fertility drugs to have multiple births.

When did China’s one-child policy end?

At the time, officials said the phrase “family planning” would disappear from the ministerial lexicon as China grappled with its shrinking labour pool and rapidly ageing population.

Other policies designed to discourage people from having babies had also been gradually lifted. In October 2017, officials from five provinces – Guangdong, Yunnan, Jiangxi, Hainan, and Fujian – were asked to revise rules allowing companies to fire employees who had extra children.

In 2017, President Xi Jinping also dropped the usual reference to “family planning”, saying China would promote “the coordination of childbirth policies with other economic and social policies”. It was the first time in nearly 30 years that the party work report did not contain a reference to “birth control”.

Why did China decide to allow families to have three children?

In 2020, China’s fertility rate was 1.3 children per woman, below the replacement level of 2.1 needed for a stable population.

China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said that surveys showed the average number of children that a Chinese woman was willing to have in 2020 was 1.8.

The 2020 census data had already quickly led to calls for China to “fully open up childbirth” after it also confirmed that while the overall population continued to grow to 1.412 billion in 2020, the working aged population fell while the elderly population increased.

What is the outlook for China’s birth rate?

In its most recent estimate in November 2020, the government said it expected China’s population to peak in 2027.

But He Yafu, an independent expert on China’s demographics, expects the population to start to fall in 2022 as the number of births drops to nearly 10 million and the number of deaths surpasses 10 million.

“I estimated the number of new births in China in 2020 to be over 12 million, it will fall to around 11 million this year, and then drop by another 1 million in 2022,” He said before the release of the latest census data.

Beijing, which has a population of around 21 million, suffered a 24.3 per cent decline in its birth rate in 2020 compared with a year earlier, according to official data.

One-Child Policy and Its Influence on China Essay

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Introduction

Background and concept of one-child policy, the effects of china’s one-child policy, populace growth, the sex ratio, rights to life, proportion of old age dependency, the future of the policy, works cited.

China’s one-tyke family strategy has affected the lives of almost a fourth of the world’s populace. The Chinese government guaranteed that it was a transient measure to move toward a little intentional family culture. Thus, we will analyze the influence of China’s one-tyke policy, its accomplishment, and recommendations. This paper will discuss why the approach was presented and how it is actualized. We will analyze the results of the arrangement about populace development, the proportion amongst men and women, and the proportion between grown-up kids and elderly guardians. Finally, we will examine the significance of the strategy in contemporary China.

As China rose out of the social interruptions and monetary stagnation of the Cultural Revolution, its government dispatched market changes to revive the economy. In 1979, perceiving that populace control was vital to raise expectations for everyday comforts, the one-tyke family approach was presented (Kang and Wang 91). The one-child policy has exposed the challenges of human freedom. It is morally unsuitable to take a human life, be it by homicide, capital punishment, or premature birth. Numerous social orders acknowledged premature birth to safeguard the mental and social prosperity of the mother.

This strategy restricts family estimate, empowers a late marriage, childbearing, and the dividing of kids when second kids are allowed. Family spacing panel at neighborhood levels created immediate techniques to support the policy. However, the one-tyke principle applies to urban inhabitants and government workers (Hao 171). In rustic zones, a second child is permitted following five years, if the first is a woman. A third kid is authorized in some ethnic minorities and in remote, under-populated regions. Financial motivations for consistence, significant fines, seizure of property and loss of employment, were utilized to authorize the approach.

The strategy depends on general access to contraception and premature birth. By implication, Eighty-seven for each penny of wedded women used contraception. Most women acknowledged the technique suggested by the family physician, which supported one-child policy (Hao 172). Dependence on long haul contraception kept the premature birth rate low (25 for every penny of Chinese ladies of regenerative age have had no less than one fetus removal, as contrasted 43 for each penny in the United States). Premature births are authorized when contraceptives are ineffective or when the pregnancy is not affirmed. However, Unattended and unsanctioned conveyances do happen.

In 1979, the Chinese government left with an aspiring system of business change taking after the financial stagnation of the Cultural Revolution. Sixty-six percent of the populace was under the age of 30 years, and the children of postwar America of the 1950s and 1960s were entering their regenerative years. The administration saw strict populace control as key to monetary change and a change in living standards. As a result, the Chinese government presented the one-kid family arrangement. The strategy comprises of an arrangement of directions administering the affirmed size of Chinese families. These controls incorporate limitations on family measure, late marriage, and childbearing, and the separating of kids (where second kids are allowed). Family-arranging advisory groups as common and regional levels devise immediate systems for execution. Despite its name, the one-kid principle applies to a minority of the populace; for urban occupants and government workers, the arrangement are upheld, with a couple of exemptions (Festini and de Martino 360).

Special cases incorporate families in which the main kid has an inability or both guardians work in high-hazard occupations, (for example, mining) or are themselves from one-youngster families (in a few zones). In areas where 70 percent of the general population lives, a second child permitted following five years, yet this arrangement occasionally applies if the main youngster is a woman (an unmistakable affirmation of the conventional inclination for boys). The influence of China’s one-tyke policy affected the sex ratio and population growth. However, the policy increased abortion to astronomical heights.

The one-child policy is a standout amongst the most critical social approaches ever executed in China. The approach, set up in 1979, restricted couples to just having one tyke. The policy was influenced by China’s amazingly vast populace development, which was seen as a danger to the nation’s future monetary development and expectations for everyday comforts of the general population (Festini and de Martino 359). At the season of being actualized, China’s populace was around 970 million (Festini and de Martino 360), thus, it was the Chinese government’s objective to enforce populace development to keep the aggregate populace focused around 1.2 billion for the year 2000 (Hao 170). China’s aggregate populace was around 1.26 billion in 2000 (Hu 5), so the objective was accomplished, yet maybe was marginally higher than what the legislature estimated. For the arrangement to be effectively executed, the administration presented motivating forces so that the populace would follow the directions.

These impetuses have been monetary, including duties and fines for the individuals who do not go with the policy. For instance, families have favored access to lodging, social insurance and instruction (Festini and de Martino 368). There have been both positive and negative effects connected with the one-tyke policy in China. It has been effective in avoiding between 250 million and 300 million births (Festini and de Martino 370), and in addition, diminishing the aggregate ripeness rate (TFR) from 2.7 youngsters for every woman in 1980 to 1.7 in 2011 (Festini and de Martino 369). This figure in TFR has prompted the diminishing of the aggregate populace of China accordingly dodging a populace blast, keeping up monetary development, and enhancing expectation of everyday comforts. Nonetheless, there are worries that the current TFR that is underneath the substitution level of 2.1 may bring a different demographic circumstance. This low TFR may decrease to lower level, potentially prompting a populace decrease that supports ‘minimal low’ richness (TFR of 1.3 or beneath). By implication, there will be an absence of individuals in the working age populace and the prospect of a maturing populace (Kang and Wang 91). This would influence the reliance proportion of the nation and put gigantic weight on the administration to give monetary and social backing to the elderly populace.

A standout amongst the impacts of the one child policy has been China’s sex proportion and the “missing young ladies” marvel. China has encountered a skewed sex proportion for quite a while, before tyke policy was presented. This issue has been exacerbated subsequent to the presentation of the approach. In China, having male kids is favored over girls. This inclination is particularly present in rustic territories because male children are in charge of supporting relatives once they have achieved maturity. As a result, the child inclination has prompted an expanded skew in the sex proportion during childbirth. Prior to the strategy in 1979, the sex proportion was 115 boys per 96 girls marginally higher than the world sex proportion of 109 boys per 90 females. The amazingly skewed sex proportion in China has prompted the “missing young ladies” wonder, which means many young women are “lost” from China’s populace registers. There are four fundamental clarifications for this: female child murder, disregard, or relinquishment; underreporting of female births; reception of female kids; and sex-particular premature births (Riley 34).

Abortion, which is the primary driver of China’s sex proportion, was an aftereffect of the policy. Through the presentation of ultrasound machines in the mid-1980s, Chinese couples could illicitly discover the sex of their tyke and after that could complete a fetus removal if their first kid was a female, making it workable for them to have a child (Kaiman14).

Lately, there have been arrangements with the Chinese government to unwind the policy. Notwithstanding, there is levelheaded discussion whether this will make a populace blast inside China. The monetary weight of having a kid has deflected numerous couples from having a second tyke; subsequently this unwinding of the arrangement might not affect the populace development of China. Consequently, numerous couples from provincial regions will probably have a second tyke as they depend more on their sons to bolster the family. There could even be a plausibility of the policy being suspended by 2020 (Kaiman14), however this will rely on upon future demographic patterns and if the legislature will surrender one of the greatest strategies ever presented in China.

At the point when the one-youngster approach was presented, the administration set an objective populace of 1.2 billion by the year 2000 (Kaiman16). The census count of 2000 puts the populace at 1.27 billion. The strategy itself influenced the diminishing in the ripeness rate. The most sensational abatement, in the rate really happened before the arrangement was enforced. Different interpretations have been advanced to clarify why 118 young men are conceived for every 101 young women conceived with sex-particular fetus removal picking up the amplest acknowledgment. Indeed, even in other Asian nations without populace control projects, for example, South Korea and Taiwan, the solid social inclination for children joined the entrance to cut edge innovations, for example, ultrasound has brought about expanded male sex proportions during childbirth. In the United States, some Chinese outsiders utilized sex fetus removal to sustain the male child ratio. Sex-selection birth includes couples picking premature birth if the embryo is observed to be a female tyke. In June of 2006, the Chinese governing body declined to case, sex-selection premature births a wrongdoing, though abortion is illegal. Since sex-premature births abuse, family control strategy, the legislature has guaranteed to rebuff the policy (Kaiman 4).

The social weight applied by the one-kid strategy has influenced the rate at which guardians surrender undesirable youngsters in state-supported housing, from which thousands are embraced both universally and by Chinese guardians. The guardians offered them up for formal or casual selection. A greater part of youngsters who experienced formal selection in China in the late 1980’s was young women, which has increased in the recent survey. The acts of receiving undesirable young women are steady with both the child inclination of numerous Chinese couples.

The impact of the strategy on the sex proportion has gotten much consideration. The sex proportion during childbirth, characterized as the extent of male births to female ranged from 1.03 to 1.07 in industrialized countries. There has been an enduring increment in the reported sex proportion, from 1.08 in 1979, 1.12 in 1988, to 1.19 in 2001. Thus, the policy supported sex-selection ratios in China (Hesketh and Xing 1172). By implication, parents abort a female fetus, which they consider a liability to family stability. This assumption has been widely criticized by human rights institutions (Hesketh and Xing 1173).

What transpires the missing young women involves hypothesis. Sex-fetus removal after ultrasonography without a doubt represents a decrease in female births. Actual figures are difficult to get, because sex-premature birth is illicit and not documented (Hesketh and Xing 1171). Consequently, non-registration of female birth adds to the sex-proportion gap. A survey completed in three areas found a typical sex proportion in the under-14 age bunch, with the genuine number of young women surpassing the number enlisted by 22 percent (Hesketh and Xing 1173). Although child murders of young women are extremely uncommon now, fewer treatments of female newborn are uncommon.

Numerous human rights institutions have scrutinized the “One-Child Policy”. They considered the one-youngster approach is against the human right of proliferation. Reactions mostly concentrate on the very conceivable social issues, for example, the “One-Two-Four” issue, while perceiving the significance of having such an approach for the nation. Identified with this feedback are sure the side-outcomes that are ascribed to the one-kid strategy, including the utilization of sex-selection birth. Birth proponents argue that the one-tyke strategy is an infringement of human rights. Consequently, practices purportedly used to actualize this arrangement are illegal. China has been blamed for meeting its populace prerequisites through the gift, intimidation, constrained disinfection, constrained premature birth, and child murder, with most reports originated from rustic zones (Hesketh and Xing 1173).

An online report revealed that in 2005, share of 20,000 constrained premature births in Guangdong province was set because of the reported carelessness of the one-tyke approach (Hesketh and Xing 1175). The exertion included utilizing compact ultrasound gadgets to find premature birth applicants. The report stated that women as far along as 8.5 months pregnant were compelled to prematurely end by infusion of saline arrangement into the womb. Because of the procedure, the mother is exposed to extraordinary mental and physical torment. Thus, utilization of constrained disinfection and controlled birth is in disagreement with formally expressed approaches and perspective on China as indicated by government authorities (Susan 165).

It is obscure how regular child murder is in China, however, government authorities say that it is uncommon. There are stories of guardians executing their female newborn in remote and country regions for various reasons. Beside evasion of the punishments and confinements of the state prevention arrangement, the main drivers of child murder, particularly for infant, girls, would be needed in rural China alongside the customary inclination for boys. Thus, the Chinese government has recognized the unfortunate social outcomes of this sex lopsidedness. The deficiency of girls has expanded mental issues and social conduct among men. Although the one-kid arrangement has been reprimanded for the high sex proportion, it is one contributory variable. There was a high sex proportion in China in the 1930s and 1940s, because of child murder of girls, and afterward the proportion declined in the years after the Communist Revolution of 1949. However, sex-fetus removal would proceed at a lower rate without the one-child policy.

The quick abatement in the birth rate, joined steady or enhance future, has prompted an expanding extent of elderly individuals and an increment in the proportion between elderly guardians and grown-up children. The rate of the populace beyond 65 is at par with adolescents. Although these figures are lower than those in industrialized regions are, the absence of sufficient annuity scope in China implies that money related reliance on posterity is still fundamental for 65 percent of elderly people. Pension scope is accessible to those utilized in the administration part and extensive organizations. This issue has been named the “four-to-one” wonder, implying that expanding quantities of couples will be in charge of the consideration of one youngster and four guardians. Activities are under an approach to enhance access to government benefits for private annuities trying to diminish the weight of the 4:2:1 phenomenon.

The Chinese government is confronting a critical test: the need to adjust the human right of proliferation with populace development. Thus, the unwinding strategy must be tailored to align with the rights to life. There is presently great proof that China is turning into a little family culture. Thus, government institutions must abolish the policy to avoid workforce shortage. Perceiving that ultrasonography encourages sex premature birth, non-administrative associations effectively campaigned to sanction the law. Improving the financial and social estimation of women will require creative projects. Enhanced instruction and pay employment offer in parental property will add to the improved status of women.

Indeed, even the tyrant legislature of China must make concessions to the social male inclination in permitting most of its populace to the second tyke when the first is a young woman. Along these lines, while sex determination is illicit in China, a high extent of kids (particularly the second youngster) is young men demonstrating that the prohibition on fetus removal is not extremely successful. Consequently, the Chinese government has declared “particular strategies for young women in medical services, training, and income. We have seen from China’s case that laws influencing societal states of mind are hard to uphold. In India, the two-tyke strategy has been implemented by denying employments to those with more than two kids. The punishments have influenced primarily those from the lower position and class while the upper ranks and classes have the capacity to maintain a strategic distance (Barry 122).

The one-child policy has exposed the challenges of human freedom. It is morally unsuitable to take a human life, be it by homicide, capital punishment, or premature birth. Numerous social orders acknowledged premature birth to safeguard the mental and social prosperity of the mother. Women activists have battled long and difficult to make fetus removal lawful and effectively accessible to women. By implication, women must have the supreme right to life (Barry 134). The monstrous movement to urban zones could clear much of the ills ascribed to sexual irregularity in China (Hu 6). A few guardians may over-enjoy their exclusive tyke creating adolesenct issues.. Since the 1990s, a few people have stressed that this will bring about a higher propensity toward poor social correspondence and participation abilities among children. However, no social studies have researched the proportion of these over-reveled kids and to what degree they are reveled. With the original of youngsters conceived under the strategy, achieving adulthood, such stresses are reduced.

Barry, Naughton. The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth , Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2007. Print.

Festini, Filippo, and de Martino, Matiq. “Twenty Five Years of the One Child Family Policy in China.” Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 58.1 (2004): 358-373. Print.

Hao, Yuri. “China’s 1.2 Billion Target for the Year 2000: ‘Within’ or ‘Beyond’?” The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 19.20 (1988): 165-183.

Hesketh, Therese, and Xing, Zhu. “The Effect of China’s One-Child Family Policy After 25 Years.” The New England Journal of Medicine 353.11 (2005): 1171-1176.

Hu, Huiting 2002, Family Planning Law and China’s Birth Control Situation . Web.

Kaiman, Jonathan 2013, China’s One-Child Policy to be Relaxed as Part of Reforms Package The Guardian . Web.

Kaiman, Jonathan, 2014 Time Running Out for China’s One-Child Policy after Three Decades the Guardian . Web.

Kang, Cun, and Wang, Yuri 2003, “Sex Ratio at Birth In: Theses Collection of 2001.” National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Survey 23.1 (2003): 88-98.Print.

Riley, Nancy. “China’s Population: New Trends and Challenges.” Population Journal 60.2 (2004): 14-45.

Susan, Greenhalgh. “Science, Modernity, and the Making of China’s One-Child Policy.” Population and Development Review 29.1 (2003): 163-196. Print.

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One Child Policy Essay

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Introduction to china's one child policy, ethical implications and unintended consequences, public health interventions and nationalist campaigns, human trafficking and adoption scandals, sterilization policies and women's reproductive rights, effects of the one child policy on the chinese and the world economy, conclusion: reflecting on the one child policy's legacy.

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An Olympics Scene Draws Scorn. Did It Really Parody ‘The Last Supper’?

Some church leaders and politicians have condemned the performance from the opening ceremony for mocking Christianity. Art historians are divided.

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By Yan Zhuang

A performance during the Paris Olympics’ opening ceremony on Friday has drawn criticism from church leaders and conservative politicians for a perceived likeness to Leonardo da Vinci’s depiction of a biblical scene in “The Last Supper,” with some calling it a “mockery” of Christianity.

The event’s planners and organizers have denied that the sequence was inspired by “The Last Supper,” or that it intended to mock or offend.

In the performance broadcast during the ceremony, a woman wearing a silver, halo-like headdress stood at the center of a long table, with drag queens posing on either side of her. Later, at the same table, a giant cloche lifted, revealing a man, nearly naked and painted blue, on a dinner plate surrounded by fruit. He broke into a song as, behind him, the drag queens danced.

The tableaux drew condemnation among people who saw the images as a parody of “The Last Supper,” the New Testament scene depicted in da Vinci’s painting by the same name. The French Bishops’ Conference, which represents the country’s Catholic bishops, said in a statement that the opening ceremony included “scenes of mockery and derision of Christianity,” and an influential American Catholic, Bishop Robert Barron of Minnesota, called it a “gross mockery.”

The performance at the opening ceremony, which took place on and along the Seine on Friday, also prompted a Mississippi-based telecommunications provider, C Spire, to announce that it would pull its advertisements from Olympics broadcasts. Speaker Mike Johnson described the scene as “shocking and insulting to Christian people.”

The opening ceremony’s artistic director, Thomas Jolly, said at the Games’ daily news conference on Saturday that the event was not meant to “be subversive, or shock people, or mock people.” On Sunday, Anne Descamps, the Paris 2024 spokeswoman, said at the daily news conference, “If people have taken any offense, we are, of course, really, really sorry.”

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Trump Promises Rollback On Trans Rights: Here's What He's Said

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Former President Donald Trump on Friday said he would undo a new Biden administration policy that will offer protections for transgender students under the Title IX federal civil rights law—his latest promise to restrict LGBTQ rights if elected to a second term.

Republican presidential candidate, former U.S. President Donald Trump, speaks during a rally on May ... [+] 1, 2024 at Avflight Saginaw in Freeland, Michigan.(Photo by Nic Antaya/Getty Images)

Trump said on “day one” he would reverse the Biden administration’s expansion of Title IX that will prohibit federally funded schools from preventing transgender students from using bathrooms, locker rooms and pronouns that align with their gender identities.

Trump told a crowd in Iowa in March he would sign an executive order to “cut federal funding” for schools pushing “critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children.”

In January, he released a video detailing a range of policies targeting gender-affirming care for minors, including pressing Congress to approve a federal ban and several measures to restrict federal funding when it came to trans issues.

Trump said he would block doctors who provide gender-affirming care from Medicare and Medicaid, forbid federal agencies from actions to “promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age,” and task the Justice Department with investigating the medical industry to see if they “deliberately covered up horrific long-term side effects of sex transitions in order to get rich.”

In the video, Trump laid out additional plans for extending the restrictions to schools, promising “severe consequences,” including potential civil rights violations, for educators who “suggest to a child they could be trapped in the wrong body.”

In 2022 Trump told a crowd in Texas he would ban transgender individuals from competing in women’s sports, and attacked transgender swimmer Lia Thomas, weeks after her hotly debated record-breaking swim meet in Ohio while she was competing on the University of Pennsylvania swim team.

Trump and Republicans attacked President Joe Biden for recognizing Transgender Day of Visibility, which coincidentally fell on March 31 this year, the same day as Easter Sunday. Trump’s campaign falsely claimed that Biden “chose” Easter to mark the advocacy day, even though it’s fallen on March 31 since 2009 and the Biden administration has recognized the day every year of his presidency.

Crucial Quote

“The left-wing gender insanity being pushed at our children is an act of child abuse. Very simple. Here’s my plan to stop the chemical, physical and emotional mutilation of our youth,” Trump said in the January video.

What To Watch For

The Biden administration’s expansion of Title IX will take effect on Aug. 1. More than 20 Republican-led states are suing the administration to block the law.

Surprising Fact

Trump’s daughter, Tiffany Trump, defended her father’s relationship with the LGBTQ community at a “Trump Pride” event in Florida in 2020, arguing that “prior to politics, he supported gays, lesbians, the LGBQIA+ community,” omitting the T in the acronym that stands for “transgender.” Trump called himself a “real friend” of the gay community in 2016. More recently, he hosted a gathering of the conservative LGBTQ organization, Log Cabin Republicans, at Mar-A-Lago in December 2022, where he declared “we’re fighting for the gay community, and we are . . . fighting hard,” Politico reported. Trump told “60 Minutes” in 2016 he was “fine” with same-sex marriage, despite previously suggesting he would appoint Supreme Court judges who would support reversing its legalization. His administration also launched a global campaign to decriminalize homosexuality in countries where it is illegal.

Key Background

Trump’s attacks on transgender rights and healthcare date back to his first days in the White House, when he removed virtually all mentions of LGBTQ people from federal websites. He subsequently enacted a string of regulations to scale back protections for transgender individuals in anti-discrimination laws across the education, housing, employment and health care sectors, filed legal briefings in opposition of LGBTQ rights in numerous court cases and banned transgender people from serving in the military (a policy Biden has since reversed).

Further Reading

Trump Campaign Blasts Biden For Recognizing ‘Transgender Day Of Visibility’ On Easter Sunday—But Visibility Day Always Falls On March 31 (Forbes)

Here’s How Americans Really Feel About LGBTQ Issues (Forbes)

Biden Admin Bolsters Protections For Gay And Trans People In Healthcare, Reversing Trump Policy (Forbes)

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