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China to begin two-child policy

• austenallred 11y ago
  This link has a bit more information: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2013-11/15/c_132891920.htm http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2013-11/15/c_1328919... (Yes, it's from a couple of years ago, but it describes China's thinking).
  • GordonS 11y ago
    "China will loosen its decades-long one-child population policy, allowing couples to have two children if one of them is an only child, according to a key decision issued on Friday by the Communist Party of China (CPC)." So there are still rules, just not as stringent.
    • austenallred 11y ago
      More specifically, for the 37% of the population which was affected by the one-child policy, the number has moved from one to two.
    • jpatokal 11y ago
      The parent links to an old article, and that's the old rule which was just overturned. Now everybody can have two -- but apparently still no more than two?
      • austenallred 11y ago
        Correct
      • GordonS 11y ago
        Presumably you can still have more than two if you afford it (you pay a hefty fine).
  • Natanael_L 11y ago
    > allowing couples to have two children if one of them is an only child > To ensure coordinated economic and social development, the population size for China should be kept at about 1.5 billion, said Guo, citing the results of a study sponsored by the State Council, China's cabinet. > China should keep its total fertility rate at around 1.8, and the current rate is between 1.5 to 1.6, allowing the country to maneuver its population policy, according to Guo. It seems like the aim is for a long-term stable demography. Ensuring the working population doesn't fall too much, for example.
    • baldfat 11y ago
      Gender bias for one child must be one big influence. > there will be 30 million more men than women in 2020 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy#Sex-based_birth_rate_disparity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy#Sex-based_bir... It was against the law to find the gender of your child in China because if given the option many people wanted boys and would abort.
      • akshat_h 11y ago
        It might have been a big influence, but I am not entirely sure this will help. Similar issues exist in India without any limit, just because of the cost of raising children.
  • desdiv 11y ago
    >2013-11-15 18:55:05 Look at the timestamp. The article you linked was from two years ago. The "parents can have two kids if at least one parent is an only child" policy described in that article was overturned today. Now everyone can have two kids.
• ck2 11y ago
  Middle-class in China is going to be fascinating to watch as it consumes all resources. (four times the entire population of the USA for perspective) I guess the logic is it will help their economy?
  • oblio 11y ago
    The interesting thing about humans is that they adapt. There's a reason economic growth exists, and not all of it relies on: suck up more oil, chop down more wood.
• paublyrne 11y ago
  This has been expected for a while. Hopefully it can help address the increasing gender imbalance. It has reached 6:5 male to female births, resulting in huge numbers of Chinese men who cannot find marriage partners.
  • elcct 11y ago
    Sounds like a great opportunity to create service like Uber, but with wives
    • madeofpalk 11y ago
      You mean, tinder?
      • TeMPOraL 11y ago
        Honestly, for Tinder-like service you just need to turn on WeChat in the evening and run "people nearby" search so that you pop up on a list with updated location. The offers stream themselves.
        • JonnieCache 11y ago
          > The offers stream themselves. Interesting turn of phrase there...
          • TeMPOraL 11y ago
            That's how it actually works. You don't even have to do anything. Just opt-in to temporarily share your location by running a "people in the neighbourhood" scan. "Girls" start writing to you offering "door-to-door full range of services". I say "girls" because I strongly suspect those are fake accounts run by some agency that will dispatch actual workers to you when you agree for the service. I think so, because otherwise China has a really big evening employment and entertainment problem.
        • seanmcdirmid 11y ago
• b0ner_t0ner 11y ago
  Need more of them to make iPhones.
  • ck2 11y ago
    You say it in a crass way but actually, the point of the growing middle class and shifting of China's economic base means there are going to be fewer people making iphones. Next it will move to Vietnam
    • TeMPOraL 11y ago
      Maybe we can abuse the fine folks in Shenzhen one last time and automate the entire manufacturing industry away?
      • ck2 11y ago
        China is getting really good at assembly robots too. However if the process can be completely automated then why not do the manufacturing right where the bulk of consumption is going to happen to reduce shipping costs which are always growing.
        • TeMPOraL 11y ago
          That's a good point, but we still need to reach that outcome, and this will happen graudally. Whatever the end results of robofactory revolution, it will have to start here, in the factory of the world, because that's where we make robots for cheap.
• s_dev 11y ago
  Overpopulation is an interesting problem, it exponentially affects every other problem we have -- some balance will have to be found between ultimately telling people they can't kids or maintaining that those people have autonomy over their own lives and can make such a decision. I don't know what the solution is - perhaps making the developing world developed as fast as possible.
  • LoSboccacc 11y ago
    that only moves the problem further along the road - much further, but still: world won't be able to feed infinite humans so a restriction policy will eventually be needed (or systematic culling, depending on whichever comes first between enlightenment and desperation) an interesting resulting problem of which is that population will keep aging. solutions will need to take into account non productive member in their older age, either balancing with equal amount of younger or culling from the top instead of the bottom of the age bracket we won't likely see that in our lifespan, with some luck.
    • bryanlarsen 11y ago
      We can't feed infinite humans, but if we covered the earth with greenhouses, we could feed trillions of people. Overpopulation causes many problems, being able to feed them is not one of them.
      • LoSboccacc 11y ago
        True it can feed and house many more people, but eventually we'll reach the cap.
    • XorNot 11y ago
      Except in no part of the world of the modern world has human population increase continued unchecked. Most western countries populations grow only because of immigration - fertility is below the replacement rate. Overpopulation is the "problem" people trot out so they don't have to talk about things they might actually have to do something about, like switching to renewable energy sources, or improving women's education in developing countries.
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• nabla9 11y ago
  Once-child policy was brutally enforced and cruel. It was also highly effective way to reduce poverty. China vs. India: GDP per capita versus fertility rate http://www.google.se/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ctype=b&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&met_s=sp_pop_totl&scale_s=lin&ind_s=false&dimp_c=country:region&met_x=ny_gdp_pcap_kd&scale_x=lin&ind_x=false&idim=country:IND:CHN&ifdim=country&tunit=Y&pit=1382997600000&hl=en_US&dl=en_US&ind=false&icfg&iconSize=0.5 http://www.google.se/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ct...
  • logicchains 11y ago
    >It was also highly effective way to reduce poverty. Citation needed; correlation does not equal causation. Other East Asian countries showed similar reductions in fertility in spite of no similar policies, and much greater reductions in poverty. China vs. India vs. Asian Tigers (Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea): GDP per capita versus fertility rate http://www.google.se/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ctype=b&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&met_s=sp_pop_totl&scale_s=lin&ind_s=false&dimp_c=country:region&met_x=ny_gdp_pcap_kd&scale_x=lin&ind_x=false&idim=country:IND:CHN&ifdim=country&tunit=Y&pit=1382997600000&hl=en_US&dl=en_US&ind=false&icfg&iconSize=0.5#!ctype=b&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_x=ny_gdp_pcap_kd&scale_x=lin&ind_x=false&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&met_s=sp_pop_totl&scale_s=lin&ind_s=false&dimp_c=country:region&idim=country:IND:CHN:HKG:KOR:SGP&ifdim=country&pit=-289566000000&hl=en_US&dl=en_US&ind=false http://www.google.se/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ct... Taiwan excluded because it seems to be missing from that dataset.
    • deleted 11y ago
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    • JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      It could be that it worked in China, in concert with other policies. Because it didn't work elsewhere is also correlation without causation.
  • jpatokal 11y ago
    Incredibly brutally enforced at times: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_abortion_of_Feng_Jianmei https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_abortion_of_Feng_Jianme...
• nitin_flanker 11y ago
  Isn't this an old news?
• tonomics 11y ago
  A pension crisis in China would be tremendously disastrous; something one can barely picture. With growth and technology, fertility rates goes down and emerging markets,specially BRIC nations, will be severely affected by this.
• r-w 11y ago
  The Giver’s portrayal of systematic euthanasia of the elderly comes to mind. I really hope we never have to make that kind of decision. After all, what choice could possibly be compatible with our principles of liberty, equality, respect, and fairness? This may be the hardest ethical problem we can’t afford not to solve.
  • electricblue 11y ago
    Seems fairly easy to me. Pay 18 year old boys $10k to get a vasectomy. Watch birth rates plummet. Captialism gives us systematic inequality, we should use it to fix more problems
    • bilbo0s 11y ago
      ??? That's not the way you control birth rates. You control birth rates by controlling FEMALE fertility... not male fertility. There are mathematical reasons behind this, but for the purposes of simplicity I'll give the lay explanation. ie - A female can only have one (or so) child every 9 months. A single human male can produce one every day. So having a population with only one male, but 100 females, allows for a FAR higher reproduction rate than a population with 100 males, but only one female.
      • electricblue 11y ago
        Vasectomy is currently the only permanent sterilization procedure without serious health risks. Barring some strange shift in cultural attitudes where fertile males suddenly become irresistible to every female on earth it should do fine until we find a better way for both genders. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
        • bilbo0s 11y ago
          In that case... I hope you have some strange shift in cultural attitudes planned for preventing females from being forcibly used by fertile males. I'm not saying we need a perfect method... I'm saying we need a method that acknowledges the realities that many populations around the world live in. Female victimization is a reality in a lot of places on this planet. (To be completely fair... it's a reality even here in the US. Even on the university campus I'm sitting on.)
• TorKlingberg 11y ago
  The once-child policy has been gradually weakened for some time. It will be interesting to see the future population trend in China. I can see it going one of two ways: 1. Multiple children has previously been reserved to those with political connections or money. Now that everyone can have two they will jump at the opportunity. or 2. Almost every young person in China has grown up in a single child family and sees it as the normal family. Social norms are also based around parents dedicating a lot of resources to one child. So they continue to have only one child. In about a decade China may have to start encouraging people to have more children, like Japan.
  • neolefty 11y ago
    I like that question, and I've asked a few people here (I live in Chengdu, China) about it. Anecdotally, it's some of both. City people tend to view raising a child as very expensive, mainly because of education, so many expect they can only afford one. And since that has become the new norm, they're comfortable with that. But many also plan to have two children. Most I've met who already have a child and could feasibly have a second, don't plan to. I suspect they've already gone through the decision to only have one and don't want to revisit it. However, I don't know what the rural attitudes are, since I haven't talked with people in the countryside. I think China's demographic future looks a lot like South Korea's or Japan's, with a shortage of young people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_South_Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_South_Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan
    • zhemao 11y ago
      > I don't know what the rural attitudes are, since I haven't talked with people in the countryside Rural families have largely been exempted from the one-child policy for a while now. This new development won't change anything for people living in the countryside. > I think China's demographic future looks a lot like South Korea's or Japan's Yeah, China already has an issue with a rapidly aging population. It's called the 4-2-1 problem (4 grandparents, 2 parents, 1 child). But this happens in most developed countries. For instance, the average age in the US would be much higher if it weren't for immigration. The native birth rate isn't very high.
• alltakendamned 11y ago
  Can someone shine a light on the expected macro economic effects of this decision, both in china and worldwide ?
• Mimick 11y ago
  Overpopulation isn't that of a big problem as the politics make it seem.
  • trymas 11y ago
    Why (I am serious, as IMHO today's global population is too big)?
    • anunderachiever 11y ago
      If you place all 7.3 billion people onto an area of the size of Austria, every one has more than 11m² to their own. Of course this illustration is a simplification but it brings the world population back to perspective.
      • tgb 11y ago
        This is obviously not at all the concern that people have regarding overpopulation.
      • anonyfox 11y ago
        And you need space to plant stuff to feed everyone. Can 11m² be enough to feed an average person through the whole year?
        • iofj 11y ago
          The rest of Europe has more than enough farmland to provide for 7 billion people, calorie-wise. If we were to learn how to farm on the open sea, back of the envelope calculations tell me we should easily be able to multiply today's population by 10^4 or more. If there is a problem, it's water. On the plus side, water is the easiest to recycle by far, the only limit we're close to hitting in some locations is the amount of water that's recycled for free by the weather. Also, we have skyscrapers. The 11m2 area per person is ground-level area. If you have 10-storey skyscrapers on average, 120m2 for every family on average should be easy, and allow for population to increase 5 fold without exceeding available space in Austria.
• sethbannon 11y ago
  From the article "All couples will now be allowed to have two children". So it seems China isn't so much ending its one-child policy, as augmenting it by one to a two-child policy. This means the brutal and cruel enforcement will continue, only it will kick in at the third child instead of at the second.
  • oafitupa 11y ago
    Any suggestions?
  • vincentkriek 11y ago
    Brutal and cruel? I agree it's a severe limit on the personal freedom but China doesn't value personal freedom as highly as the west does. Brutal and cruel is not the right terms for this in my opinion, you can have a beautiful, rich and fullfilling life with 2 children or less. You can plan to have just two children (up to some point). Also, I think it could benefit the earth if more countries would limit children.
    • EStudley 11y ago
      No one's denying that. "Brutal and cruel" was referring to forced abortions of pregnant women with more than one child.
      • brlewis 11y ago
        Perhaps nobody's denying that China doesn't value personal freedom as highly as the west does, or that you can have a beautiful, rich and fullfilling life with 2 children or less. Some, myself included, do deny that it could benefit the earth if more governments would enforce limits on children. I think humans are important to the future of the earth, and treating them in a cruel and brutal fashion will cause more problems than it solves.
        • Retric 11y ago
          US, Japan, and EU have negative population growth if you exclude immigration. What more do you want?
• wangii 11y ago
  Future historians will regard it as the #1 contribution of Xi's presidency.
• Keyframe 11y ago
  Are there any psychology/sociology studies how one-child policy impacted China's society? It has been documented how having one child vs siblings impact one's psyche. I wonder what kind of impact it has on a culture/society as a whole if most are from single-child families.
  • Blackthorn 11y ago
    Well, we definitely know that the policy combined with the already-existing culture resulted in a massive gender gap. Not sure of any studies beyond that, I too would be interested!
  • monk_e_boy 11y ago
    I've wondered that, also. I have a number of friends who are teachers, all of whom say that you can spot a single child within about 5 minutes of observing them. They just act differently. Watching the difference in my oldest child when the second came along and was old enough for them to play together - it was astounding. There must be some optimal number of siblings for mental health. More than 1 less than 4 ?
    • drzaiusapelord 11y ago
      Care to describe the difference?
    • emilga 11y ago
      > I have a number of friends who are teachers, all of whom say that you can spot a single child within about 5 minutes of observing them. They just act differently. Differently how? Whenever a student comes late to class, I've always imagined that those students who look up from their work are more likely to come from rural areas in Norway, and that those who don't look up to see who is coming are more likely to come from the city. But I don't really know what the difference in behavior would be for a sibling vs only child.
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• eccstartup 11y ago
  Oo0o0ps, you know this before us Chinese.
• lugus35 11y ago
  Africa : 2,5 billions by 2050 China ends one-chile policy bye bye green Earth, hello surpopulation and pollution...
• known 11y ago
  China doesn't qualify as per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ecological_footprint https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ecologica...
• code4life 11y ago
  "A Christian Manifesto" by Francis A. Schaeffer gives a reason why. Our creator inspires freedom and love. When we follow him we seek to spread freedom to not only ourselves but to others as well. A population willingly adopting the new testament Biblical principles will spread freedom willingly. The humanist world view on the other hand has no moral absolutes and must enforce the popular or elected rules onto the majority by force. America has been slowly transitioning from a Bible believing nation to a humanist world view. The result is predictable, the loss of individual freedom and the increase in the use of force to preserve the lack of these freedoms.
  • gnaritas 11y ago
    > America has been slowly transitioning from a Bible believing nation to a humanist world view. America has been slowly transitioning from a superstitious nation to a more rational one. Fixed that for you. > The humanist world view on the other hand has no moral absolutes and must enforce the popular or elected rules onto the majority by force. No one has moral absolutes, they do not exist except in the minds of those who want to force their morality onto others who don't agree with them. Laws aren't about morals, they're about reason.
    • c0achmcguirk 11y ago
      > America has been slowly transitioning from a superstitious nation to a more rational one. lulz Rationality requires laws of logic--which do not exist in a humanistic, materialistic world. Tell me, can you stub your toe on the law of non-contradiction? No? How does it exist then?
      • Dylan16807 11y ago
        I guess liquid water doesn't exist. I'm really unsure what point you're trying to make.
        • c0achmcguirk 11y ago
          It's an expression. Liquid water has mass and takes up space. It's material. It exists in a materialistic universe where the only things that exist are matter an energy. On the other hand, there's nothing physical about "laws." They lose their law-like properties and become conventions of thought rather than regulators of truth and rationality in a world where only matter and energy exist.
• jobu 11y ago
  The sad part is the policy was likely unnecessary given what we now know about the effects of urban migration and modern healthcare on reducing population growth. It's often too expensive to have multiple children in a large city, and when infant and child mortality is reduced there's less incentive to have lots of kids (so people use birth control).
• netcan 11y ago
  China's 1 child policy (now 2 child, I guess) is a difficult to fully form an opinion on. On one hand, "population crisis" is something a lot of people are concerned about^ and the policy was a direct and practical way of tackling it. On the other, it is unmistakably totalitarian. Going to 2 is a strange choice. It's just as totalitarian, but probably has a fairly negligible effect on average fertility rate. I guess they don't see ^On a tangent, I don't totally buy population crisis and judging from how rarely I hear it mentioned these days I think I'm not alone. There is obviously some natural limit on human population, but I don't think we're near it. The fact that we hear less concern about it is says something interesting about the zeitgeist. I think people believe in technological progress more in 2015 than they have since the space age and nuclear age of 50 years ago, maybe more than ever. At our current rate (ignoring the projected gradual reduction) we'll double every 65 years. I can certainly see us absorbing doubling population density in that time considering all the empty oceans, deserts, the potential for landless food productions, megacities and all that jazz. I mean, If the US & Australia went to the population densities of Germany and France (moderately dense with quite a lot of open spaces), we would be good for another 100 years. Basically, I think we have the space.
  • dragonwriter 11y ago
    > Going to 2 is a strange choice. Its not really a strange choice, its been "1 with lots of exceptions that mostly make it 2" for some time (there were exceptions with a limit of 2 instead of 1 for many rural areas, for families where at least one parent was an only child, etc.) Going to 2 is a pretty obvious simplification that doesn't really change much except the degree of administrative overhead, plus the policy has hurt perception of China in the developed world, and changing it to two from one along with well-managed press relations get you lots of "China to end one-child policy" headlines around the world, and with most people not reading below the headline, that's a huge propaganda win for doing essentially nothing but making a totalitarian policy administratively simpler. And, really, it was always the plan: the OCP was originally conceived of as a single generation policy to bring the population down, which would be replaced with a stable population policy; it didn't exactly work out that way in a crisp sense, but a going from a one-child policy with very limited exceptions, to a growing set of exceptions, to finally a two-child policy is, in outline, generally consistent with the original blueprint. > There is obviously some natural limit on human population, but I don't think we're near it. The practical limit is going to be dependent on pre-existing environmental conditions, technology and distribution of lifestyles and other factors; its a moving target. (And not necessarily moving consistently in one direction.) > The fact that we hear less concern about it is says something interesting about the zeitgeist. think people believe in technological progress more in 2015 than they have since the space age and nuclear age of 50 years ago, maybe more than ever. I don't think that's the issue. I think that the fact that Gen X and the Millenials have been less economically secure than preceding generations (reversing the trend toward greater security) means that increasingly, people are focused on more immediate, personal concerns. Plus, to the extent that there is a concern for broader, global environmental issues, the focus has been climate change rather than overpopulation (the two concerns overlap considerably, but climate change is more specific and concrete than generalized carrying capacity concerns.) > At our current rate (ignoring the projected gradual reduction) we'll double every 65 years. And, IIRC, in the mid-1960s, that was about 32 years. Which difference also contributes to the reduction in concern for overpopulation since then: we may be closer to whatever limit exists, but we're approaching it much more slowly now and that rate is still dropping.
• paradite 11y ago
  Talk about bad things about China -> Get upvotes. Talk about good things about China -> Get downvotes and people rebutting you with clearly one-sided sources. Am I surprised? No. Am I pissed? No. I believe time will tell.
  • humanrebar 11y ago
    The one-child policy in China is one of the few issues that will piss off both pro-choice and pro-life Americans. Very few things will bring this sort of across-the-board unanimity in American politics.
  • TeMPOraL 11y ago
    I don't know. Going through the comments, people here seem to be ahead of the curve in accepting that China may actually have had a point. But it's hard to agree with for many, because that would mean conceding that undemocratic solutions can be good and effective.
    • mazerackham 11y ago
      Ya I find that westerners in general have a REALLY hard time dealing with the success of China in the past 30 years, all of which springs from undemocratic policy. All media articles I read about China are ridiculously spun to grasp at straws for flaws in the government, while glossing over the tremendous good that the government has done for the people.
• pmontra 11y ago
  I've been on vacation in China this summer and a tourist guide told me that they can have as many children as they want, but 1) they have to pay some sort of one time fee for the second and successive children (maybe 10,000 Yuan? can't remember) and 2) school, healthcare, etc are to be paid in full for those children. Basically if you're not reasonably wealthy you can afford only one child.
• vinceyuan 11y ago
  One-child policy began in 1979. In 1980, My mother hid in her relatives' houses and finally delivered her second child - me. I was very lucky because if my mother was caught, I can't sit here to type these sentences. I do understand the one-child policy because there are too many people in China, especially in cities. The population should be under control. (However, as far as I know, one-child policy never really works in the very poor area. It's common to have 3+ children there.) In recent decades, China becomes much richer and people have better education. Many families (in cities) get used to having only one child and don't want to have the second child because the cost of raising a child becomes very high. Two-child policy should come earlier.
  • erispoe 11y ago
    Why is there too many people in China? What is the standard to determine the right population?
    • jdavis703 11y ago
      The kinds of socio-economic figures measured by NGOs like per capita GDP and infant mortality and life expectancy. If you increase GDP you can give your people healthier/better lives.
      • toomuchtodo 11y ago
        > If you increase GDP you can give your people healthier/better lives. Sort of. You'll still bump up against physical system constraints, at least until we're swimming in an excess of renewable, clean energy. It would take many Earth's worth of resources to have the quality of life American's have. Clean energy goes a long way to solving that, but again, physical systems have limitations.
    • BookmarkSaver 11y ago
      There are too many people on the planet to start with, and 1/6 of them is in China. The effect that they are having on the environment (both in "nature" and in their own living spaces) is atrocious, but there are too many people to reasonably switch to a sustainable model. Additionally, if you account for the fact that a gigantic portion of their land is basically uninhabitable (the Gobi Desert), they have an unreal population density (among non-trivial sovereign nations). If their population keeps expanding unchecked, they'll stop being able to feed everyone.
• chaitanya 11y ago
  So many people here with really outdated ideas about what causes over population and how to control it. Wish they would read this article by Melinda Gates on some myths around this subject: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Who-We-Are/Resources-and-Media/Annual-Letters-List/Annual-Letter-2014#MYTHTHREE http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Who-We-Are/Resources-and-Medi...
• Animats 11y ago
  Before commenting on this, there are two things you need to read. "China - total fertility rate (graph)"[1] "List of famines in China."[2] "China - Population 1950 - 2015" [3] In 1970, the fertility rate (babies born per woman) was 6. That's huge but not untypical for an undeveloped country, where a lot of people die young. Once some basic modern medicine was deployed, the number of people surviving went way up, and the population doubled in 50 years, even with the one-child policy. It would have been much, much worse without it. Something had to be done. China has a history of famines, and the last big one was in 1962, and 20 million to 40 million people starved to death. Keeping that from happening again is a major goal of policy in China. The one-child policy worked. The population is leveling off. The fertility rate is now around 1.55, which is about typical for a developed country. Once a country develops, the fertility rate drops off without coercion. China has reached that point, and no longer needs a mandatory one-child policy. India's population grew by a factor of 3.4 during that period, but India has more arable land. China is a big country, but most of it is desert, tundra, or mountains. The US has six times the arable land per capita as China. China has nothing like the Midwestern US. Actually, the one-child policy was relaxed years ago. Only some provinces require it. [1] http://www.china-profile.com/data/fig_WPP2010_TFR_1.htm http://www.china-profile.com/data/fig_WPP2010_TFR_1.htm [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines_in_China [3] http://www.china-profile.com/data/fig_Pop_WPP2006.htm http://www.china-profile.com/data/fig_Pop_WPP2006.htm
  • fapjacks 11y ago
    And this, folks, is the real kicker: Developed nations naturally begin to level off at a certain 2.x children per couple growth rate. This is a token policy, if anything.
  • humanrebar 11y ago
    > The one-child policy worked. If you ignore the invasive health monitoring, gender selective abortions, forced abortions, and other human rights violations, sure. But I'm not sure this cure wasn't worse than the disease. Especially, as you point out, since fertility rates seem to regulate themselves in developed countries. I guess if you're a pure utilitarian, you could try to make the case that it all was a net benefit, but I don't see many utilitarians around these days.
• hippich 11y ago
  I though one-child policy wasn't enforced for quite awhile, but after reading comments it appears if still was until today.
• theworstshill 11y ago
  Thats a good thing. Pressures like these have pushed technological progress forward. Either that, or a natural cycle of starvation and death, unlikely but possible. Let's see what happens.
• novaleaf 11y ago
  is it just me, or are the axis on the graphs all messed up?
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]