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

Because of this new belief, the population would be likely to keep declining, which could have tragic repercussions for China in the coming decades. The one-child policy refers to a set of laws implemented in China 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. The government began promoting birth control in the 1950s when population growth started to outpace the food supply. China has implemented or increased parental tax deductions, family leave, housing subsidies for families, and spending on reproductive health and childcare services to increase the national birth rate since ending the policy. The Chinese government also promotes flexible work hours and work-from-home options for parents.

No particular increase in Muslim population, says Minister.

Our party’s stand is that to reduce population, there should be a law for ‘hum do, hamara ek’ or one family, one child,” the Minister said. China reverted to a two-child policy after its one-child policy was terminated in 2015 and its restrictions were gradually loosened before it officially ended in 2016. There were exceptions, however, including ethnic minorities, for those whose firstborn was labeled as disabled, and for rural families whose firstborn was not a boy. 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.

But despite a lower fertility rate, the country’s population is still growing. Reports surfaced of Chinese women giving birth to their second child overseas, a practice known as birth tourism. Likewise, a Hong Kong passport differs from China’s mainland passport by providing additional advantages.[example needed] Recently[when?

The one-child policy prompted the growth of orphanages in the 1980s.[183] For parents who had “unauthorized” births, or who wanted a son but had a daughter, giving up their child for adoption was a strategy to avoid penalties under one-child restrictions. Many orphanages witnessed an influx of baby girls, as families would abandon them in favor of having a male child.[15] Many families also kept their illegal children hidden so that they would not be punished by the government.[184] In fact, “out adoption” was not uncommon in China even before birth planning. The Chinese population did slow but 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. On 31 May 2021, China’s government relaxed restrictions even more, allowing women up to three children.[136][137][138][139] This change was brought about mainly due to the declining birth rate and population growth.

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The Family Planning Commission spread propaganda by placing pictures and images on everyday items.[108] Aside from signs and posters on billboards, advertisements were placed on postage stamps, milk cartons, food products and many other household items to promote the benefits of having one child. This continues to affect marriage and birth rates around the country with fewer women of childbearing age in China. The drop in birth rates meant fewer children, which occurred as death rates dropped and longevity rates rose. It’s estimated that the share of adults ages 65 and older will have risen from just 12% to a projected 26% by 2050.

“Indian women with a single child are no more likely to engage in paid work than those with more children,” she says. Couples with a single child do not work longer, or have more free time either. Instead, educated couples preferred to make a greater commitment to one child than split the family’s time and resources among two or more siblings. This, they believe, gives that one child a better education, a monopoly on the family’s attention, and eventually a greater advantage in the job market.

Countries with increases in national wealth tend to have population growth that slows down, however. The increase in economic growth in China may have helped reduce the number of Chinese newborns over this time, not the other way around. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, infant mortality dropped significantly. The “one-child policy” – limiting births per couple through coercive measures – was implemented in the early 1980s, and fertility dropped dramatically. Although China’s fertility rate plummeted faster than anywhere else in the world during the 1970s under these restrictions, the Chinese government thought it was still too high, influenced by the global debate over a possible overpopulation crisis suggested by organizations such as the Club of Rome and the Sierra Club. Most interesting are policies one wouldn’t consider to be related to the birth rate at first glance.

Understanding China’s One-Child Policy

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. But you’ve probably noticed it already, if not in your own or extended family, then in your neighbourhood, among your former batchmates and current colleagues. The worry here is that the coming population milestone will push India to adopt knee-jerk population policies. The idea the country should adopt something like China’s former “one-child policy” has been moving from the fringe to the political mainstream.

In both countries, skewed sex ratios caused by sex selective abortions have led to a range of social problems, including forced marriages and human trafficking. The one-child policy was managed by the National Population and Family Planning Commission under the central government since 1981. The Ministry of Health of the People’s Republic of China and the National Population and Family Planning Commission were made defunct and a new single agency, the National Health and Family Planning Commission, took over national health and family planning policies in 2013. China had a rise in the abortion of female fetuses, the number of baby girls left in orphanages, and even infanticides of baby girls with the implementation of the one-child policy and the preference for male children. The efficacy of the policy itself has been challenged, however, because population growth generally slows as societies gain in income as happened in China during this time. The death rate declined, too, as the birth rate declined in China and life expectancy increased.

Given Australia’s growing ties to India, it should be concerned about what population policy could mean for the erosion of democratic norms in India. As early as March 2022, reports circulated on Chinese social media that India’s population had already surpassed China’s, though this was later dispelled by experts. India will surpass China as the country with the world’s largest population in 2023, according to the United Nations World Population Prospects 2022 report.

1. Several methods of enforcement were used, including incentives and sanctions that varied across China.
2. Dharini and Kunal Turakhia are careful to ensure that their only son, Dev, 11, spends time with his cousins, benefiting from the company while still having his parents all to himself.
3. The Family Planning Commission spread propaganda by placing pictures and images on everyday items.[108] Aside from signs and posters on billboards, advertisements were placed on postage stamps, milk cartons, food products and many other household items to promote the benefits of having one child.
4. The efficacy of the policy itself has been challenged, however, because population growth generally slows as societies gain in income as happened in China during this time.
5. A significant sliver of the middle class — urban, well educated, well-paid — is choosing to have just one child, even when that one is a girl (unusual in a country with a strong bias for male children).

It was a set of laws related to population growth that were implemented in 1979, representing one of the more draconian modern attempts to intervene in a country’s rising demographics. Several methods of enforcement were used, including incentives and sanctions that varied across China. There were financial incentives and preferential employment opportunities for those who complied. The government employed more draconian measures at times, including forced abortions and sterilization.

Even after relaxing birth control policies to allow all couples to have two children in 2015, and three children in 2021, birth rates remain low, particularly among the urban middle class favoured by the government. In April 1992, China implemented laws that enabled foreigners to adopt their orphan children, with the number of children each orphanage could offer for international adoption being limited by the China Center of Adoption Affairs. That same year, 206 children were adopted to the United States, according to the U.S. State Department.[190] Since then, the demand for healthy infant girls increased and transnational adoption increased rapidly. In accordance with this high demand, China began defining more restrictions on foreign adoption, including limitations on applicant’s age, marital status, mental and physical health, income, family size, and education.[190] According to the U.S. State Department, there have been over 80,000 international adoptions from China since international adoptions were implemented.

The policy mandated that the vast majority of couples in the country could have only one child. The phrase “one-child policy” was used often outside China but it can be a bit misleading. Exceptions were frequently made and local officials had discretion over how population limits were achieved. Despite declining birth rates, some politicians have advocated for the adoption of something like China’s former one-child policy in northern states with large Muslim populations. These calls have one child policy in india less to do with demographic reality, and more to do with majoritarian Hindu nationalist concerns around Muslim and “lower-caste” fertility. China has found that despite reversing course, it cannot undo this rapid demographic transition.

Urban, middle-class couples face mounting financial pressure, including the cost of raising children and of caring for the elderly. While the government has encouraged “high quality” urban women to give birth, rural and minority women are still discouraged from having more children. China’s one-child policy was implemented as a method of controlling the population.