Should China End Its One-Child Policy?

[Wolfman]

Wolfman, just one nitpick. The urban population has exceeded the rural population since last year (estimated). Even the '10 census had the figure virtually neck-and-neck at 50.4% rural and 49.6% urban - but that census excluded Hong Kong and Macau, with 8 million people, which would've made it 50/50.

That's an extremely misleading statistic, when one considers how China is defining "urban". For example, everyone who lives within the Chongqing municipality (population 32 million or so) is counted as "urban", even though many of them actually live in non-urban areas. In addition, quite a few of the people living in urban areas are migrant workers who are really just peasants who've relocated to the city, but don't really have much better lives (and in some cases, worse).

The key point here is that the number of Chinese who still live in relative poverty, with little opportunity to improve their situation, still represents the majority of the Chinese population.

 

[Wolfman]

I think the real problem facing China in terms of population is one that's well known in Japan and in some countries in Europe. The aging workforce. I cannot claim that this idea is original but equally cannot locate the article/study I read on the topic a few months ago.

This issue is a massive ticking time bomb in China. Consider that only two generations ago, families were massive; then suddenly, they were cut to only one or two children. This means that as that generation ages and retires, the number of people who need support is going to outstrip the working population by quite a severe degree.

It's going to cause real problems, and is one of the biggest upcoming issues that I see in determining China's long-term stability.

 

[Francesca R]

I wonder if it hasn't outlived its usefulness?

It is highly questionable whether it had any usefulness. The best that could be said of it IMO is that it made little difference to what population growth in China would have been anyway.

The worst that can be said of it is that it has produced an alarming ramp up in the dependency ratio of elederly-to-working-age citizens, which will play out with large economic cost to future generations, and that it has skewed the male:female ratio of younger cohorts of Chinese in a way that could be very socially damaging. Plus, it is an infringement of freedom.

This has come up before, here and here. My position, together with some external data, is linked in those threads.

 

[MRC_Hans]

This issue is a massive ticking time bomb in China. Consider that only two generations ago, families were massive; then suddenly, they were cut to only one or two children. This means that as that generation ages and retires, the number of people who need support is going to outstrip the working population by quite a severe degree.

It's going to cause real problems, and is one of the biggest upcoming issues that I see in determining China's long-term stability.

Another factor, which will contribute to China's age bomb, AND their population growth rate, is that in the rapidly increasing middle class, the age of first (and often only) child-birth is increasing. The past generation had their children in their early twenties, the present has their child in their early thirties. This population segment has effectively lost a decade of childbirds, because they have opted to prioritize education and carreer (an otherwise excellent choice).

Curiously, still another factor, increased lifetime expectancy, is less sinister, because the present generation, which is generally in far better health than their parents (not to mention grandparents), will probably also retire later, thus contributing to the workforce for a longer time.

Hans

 

[Wolfman]

It is highly questionable whether it had any usefulness. The best that could be said of it IMO is that it made little difference to what population growth in China would have been anyway.

You and I have exhausted our debate on this issue...I'll only point out again that families with five to eight children (the average size of a rural family fifty years ago) compared to families with one or two children makes a very obvious difference in terms of population growth; and your favorite tactic of quoting declining population growth rates that coincide with the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution as 'proof' that birth rates were naturally decreasing is no more indicative of an ongoing trend than were decreased birthrates during WW II (after which there was a massive increase in birthrates).

The worst that can be said of it is that it has produced an alarming ramp up in the dependency ratio of elederly-to-working-age citizens

Now this I really don't understand. In one breath you're saying it wouldn't have made a difference, and in the next you're saying that it's resulted in a huge imbalance in elderly to working age...which would seem to implicitly be arguing that there actually is a significant difference (if there were not, then the situation you describe would have happened regardless of the one child policy).

, which will play out with large economic cost to future generations, and that it has skewed the male:female ratio of younger cohorts of Chinese in a way that could be very socially damaging. Plus, it is an infringement of freedom.

I addressed that issue above. Putting aside the question of national resources to support the population, there is the simple fact that families living in poverty don't have the money to support multiple children to get good education, get proper health care, etc. Numerous studies done in China have shown pretty much conclusively that poor families who have small families are generally able to rise out of poverty faster than poor families who have large families. This isn't a matter of opinion; it's a verifiable, observable phenomenon. As I said above:

In this case, I'd advocate that the main factor in determining what policy to follow isn't how it affects this generation...but what impact it will have on subsequent generations. The policy that will most greatly improve the situation of later generations is the best one; the policy that is most likely to leave later generations in the same or worse situation is the worst.

Your policy, by contrast, helps ensure that subsequent generations of children have far less opportunity of rising out of poverty.

Seems to me you're putting blind idealism ahead of pragmatic reality.

 

[RhodyDave]

[citation needed]

With all due respect, there's no need for me to provide a citation. Many studies and books exist on this topic.

The inescapable conclusion to all of the population projections (which seem to agree on a figure of roughly 9 billion) is that there will simply be too many people to feed and provide potable water in all but the richest nations. Even in the wealthy nations, poverty will play an increasing role in who gets to eat. Hell, in the U.S. now, we can't feed every child, which is a national shame considering how much we waste.

Nations like India and China will suffer the greatest effects of overpopulation, but the Western nations are not immune. As food prices skyrocket, as potable water sources come into dispute, and as global warming creates droughts that will inevitable turn the American breadbasket into another dust-bowl, it looks pretty bleak.

Even with severe restrictions to population, there are too many people to be supported by ever-dwindling food and water resources. Just picture what happens to the U.S. with severe drought for several years. Devastating.

 

[Francesca R]

You and I have exhausted our debate on this issue... [ . . . ]

Seems not . . .

your favorite tactic of quoting declining population growth rates that coincide with the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution as 'proof' that birth rates were naturally decreasing

That isn't a correct representation of the statement, which is that fertility rate very consistently declines almost everywhere as countries grow richer, and that it is unlikely that that wouldn't have happened in China anyway.

Now this I really don't understand. In one breath you're saying it wouldn't have made a difference, and in the next you're saying that it's resulted in a huge imbalance in elderly to working age...which would seem to implicitly be arguing that there actually is a significant difference (if there were not, then the situation you describe would have happened regardless of the one child policy).

Not hard to understand--either it made no difference (the benign view of the policy), or if it did, the difference it made has been/will be adverse (the not-so benign view of the policy).

I addressed that issue above. Putting aside the question of national resources to support the population, there is the simple fact that families living in poverty don't have the money to support multiple children to get good education, get proper health care, etc. Numerous studies done in China have shown pretty much conclusively that poor families who have small families are generally able to rise out of poverty faster than poor families who have large families.

Demographic baby-busts have implications that spread beyond family limits, and putting aside the question of national resources doesn't make it go away--the collective public effect of individual family decisions can be substantially different from the localised family effect. Plus, it is massively time-inconsistent: the family-resource gain from not having children hits one generation earlier than the public-resource loss of one less working-age individual.

Your policy, by contrast, helps ensure that subsequent generations of children have far less opportunity of rising out of poverty.

What policy is that? Oh right, no [one child] policy. Disagreed for the reasons already given about naturally declining fertility.

 

[Delvo]

No, it shouldn't end the policy, and for that matter, a lot of other countries should implement one like it, and the rest should seriously clamp down on immigration.

Most projections say otherwise. Our population will level off around 9-10 billion at mid century. Food is a distribution problem.

That is a modern sociopolitical myth, and a pretty massively destructive one. It's only able to survive because of widespread gross ignorance of even basic science of soil and how it relates to ecosystems and agriculture. (I didn't pick it up until I went to a university with a major in an environmental subject, but it's not difficult stuff to grasp, and should have been taught to everyone by sometime in middle school or high school because of its importance.) In short, high-production agriculture reduces the land's ability to support life and keep producing more, and it can't possibly not do so, by definition. We've already had to abandon farming on many lands that simply ceased being productive anymore, and passed by the point at which more of the world became net food importers than net food exporters. It's continuing now but is not figured into population growth projections, which treat population as dictated entirely by political & social forces but not biological or physical ones (which means pretending that food production capacity doesn't decrease). That loss of productivity, combined with the geographic unevenness of human population growth & density, is also the background cause behind "distribution problems" and the conflicts associated with them.

Plus, even aside from food production, you acknowledged that there's a real water consumption problem, but then didn't draw the obvious conclusion from it. Our current, and even larger "projected", population isn't any more sustainable without enough water than it is without enough food/farmland.

one-child policies (and many other cockamamie plans to reduce birth numbers by force) don't tend to work as well as simply raising the standard of living.

The problem is with the word "simply". How do you do that for a population that already seems to be too big and dense to do it?

Yeah, I've never been able to understand this dynamic, which seems to be true all over the world. The poorest people in the world tend to have the most children but they can least afford to have so many children... A child is an extra expense, an extra mouth to feed and big liability to the family budget.

To a lot of people, they're a source of labor for the family business that doesn't need to be paid. (It's not slavery when they're related!)

 

[angrysoba]

With all due respect, there's no need for me to provide a citation. Many studies and books exist on this topic.

Too many to name just one?

Thomas Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population, for example?

Or this one:

Famine 1975! America's Decision: Who Will Survive? is a best-selling [1] 1967 book by William and Paul Paddock. The brothers describe the rapidly growing population of the world, and a situation in which they believe it would be impossible to feed the entire global population within the short term future. They believed that widespread famine would be the inevitable result, by 1975.

Or the aforementioned:

The Population Bomb was a best-selling book written by Stanford University Professor Paul R. Ehrlich and his wife, Anne Ehrlich (who was uncredited), in 1968.[1][2] It warned of the mass starvation of humans in the 1970s and 1980s due to overpopulation, as well as other major societal upheavals, and advocated immediate action to limit population growth. Fears of a "population explosion" were widespread in the 1950s and 60s, but the book and its charismatic author brought the idea to an even wider audience.[3][4] The book has been criticized in recent decades for its alarmist tone and inaccurate predictions.

These books were predicting deaths of 100s of millions of people within the coming ten or twenty years.

The inescapable conclusion to all of the population projections (which seem to agree on a figure of roughly 9 billion) is that there will simply be too many people to feed and provide potable water in all but the richest nations. Even in the wealthy nations, poverty will play an increasing role in who gets to eat. Hell, in the U.S. now, we can't feed every child, which is a national shame considering how much we waste.

I think the last sentence shows that it isn't a problem of food production. The US could easily feed every child in the country with the amount of food available. And could probably feed the rest of the world too. It's isn't a matter of food production. I am pretty sure that if the country's population shrank by half there would still be children hungry in the US. Do you actually think that the US doesn't feed all of its people through lack of food available?

Even with severe restrictions to population, there are too many people to be supported by ever-dwindling food and water resources. Just picture what happens to the U.S. with severe drought for several years. Devastating.

I'm sorry but really [citation needed]. I can't argue against such a vague doom and gloom prophecy unless you explain to me why food and water will dwindle. Are we talking about climate change reducing ice caps, here? Are we talking about the amount of guano running out?

 

[angrysoba]

The problem is with the word "simply". How do you do that for a population that already seems to be too big and dense to do it?

I think that China's main problem with population will be gender-disparity and its massive greying population. I don't think that it will come from too many people. In fact, it will come from too few young people which will still be numerous and with few marriage prospects. In short, I think that some of these problems will actually be caused by the one-child policy.

But you're right. The word "simply" is out-of-place there.

Some countries have managed to put a check on their rising populations such as, ironically enough, Iran through better family planning and to some extent raising the standard of living of its people but withdrawing some of the subsidies after a certain number of children. China's policies fall much more into line with the idea that you obey the government rather than be given more autonomy over your own life. Some countries have gone for far more disgraceful policies than China though. India comes to mind:

In the early 1970s, Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India, had implemented a forced sterilization programme, but failed. Officially, men with two children or more had to submit to sterilization, but many unmarried young men, political opponents and ignorant, poor men were also believed to have been sterilized. This program is still remembered and criticized in India, and is blamed for creating a public aversion to family planning, which hampered Government programmes for decades.

 

[MRC_Hans]

In short, high-production agriculture reduces the land's ability to support life and keep producing more, and it can't possibly not do so, by definition.

That is an interesting claim. Would you have some documentation for that?

I'm particularly curious as a citizen of a country that has had increasingly intensive agriculture for centuries, with no fall in production in sight.

Hans

 

[RhodyDave]

Too many to name just one?

Thomas Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population, for example?

Or this one:



Or the aforementioned:



These books were predicting deaths of 100s of millions of people within the coming ten or twenty years.



I think the last sentence shows that it isn't a problem of food production. The US could easily feed every child in the country with the amount of food available. And could probably feed the rest of the world too. It's isn't a matter of food production. I am pretty sure that if the country's population shrank by half there would still be children hungry in the US. Do you actually think that the US doesn't feed all of its people through lack of food available?



I'm sorry but really [citation needed]. I can't argue against such a vague doom and gloom prophecy unless you explain to me why food and water will dwindle. Are we talking about climate change reducing ice caps, here? Are we talking about the amount of guano running out?

It's interesting that you specify extremely outdated works from the 1960s, to make a point. I'd like to suggest reading more recent studies by authors such as Fred Pearce, Marc Reisner, and Robert Glennon. They have the benefit of much better scientific data and analysis than those earlier books authors that you mentioned.

I don't think that America's problem with hunger is due to lack of food. It's due to numerous reasons, socio-economic, political, and a general sense of apathy. The point is that even if we can produce enough to feed everyone right now, that will not remain the case as resources are used by a growing populace. Farms will be turned to housing, water will be diverted to cities and industry, and that's not taking into account climatic issues such as global warming (drought). We are going to have droughts and if they are severe, we will see severe consequences. Read "Cadillac Desert" if you want scientific exposition, or read "The Grapes of Wrath" if you want historic perspective.

 

[crimresearch]

Ahhh, if only the territory would quit moving around, and simply fit itself to the map where it beongs...

 

[Beerina]

From what I have read, some provinces allowed two or three child families but the thing that turned out to be the most disconcerting fact was that gender disparity between males and females was far greater in provinces where families could have more than one child.

So it went something like this?

Only one baby allowed!

Abort, abort, abort, male, keep!

Ok, ok, we're about 50 million women short now. You can have multiple babies, up to 3.

Abort, abort, abort, male, keep! Abort, abort, abort, male, keep! Abort, abort, abort, male, keep! Three males, yes!


That's...sick. I've already prophesied the dangers of having a hundred million angry young men without women for partners. Now...?

 

[Nosi]

I think China was ahead of the curve on the 1 child idea. We need to do this in many countries, as population growth is a bigger threat to humans than any other issue. We're going to outpace our ability to feed ourselves and provide clean water in a very few years.

I agree. If we do not downsize the human herd, than Mother Nature will downsize it for us in the most unpleasant manner. All nations should at least incourage a single child or no child.

 

[Nosi]

Well, parts of Europe (for example) that have had years of a sub-replacement level of childbirth are already counting the future cost of declining population levels. An effective "one child" policy would create a demographic time-bomb a few generations down the line that would be mind-boggling in its arithmetical inevitability.

I hear what you say about world population and agree in principle, but attacking that problem with policies like China's is not the solution. It will take many generations of gradual population decline to get the job done, and even then it will hurt somewhat along the way.

I disagree about a population bomb because we are going to soon lose many coastal areas and island nations to rising water levels. Like it or not, many countries with higher land area will see an increase of immigration from these lost nations/coasts. Right now, too many nations encourage large families by government perks. I say reverse the perks to the one or no child families. In America, we need to bypass the 'prolife' anti-contraceptive nuts and give away free birth control.

 

[Nosi]

First, some clarification on the one-child policy:

* members of ethnic minorities are allowed two children
* if a husband and wife are both only children, they are allowed two children
* even if not 'allowed' more than one child, in most instances that means simply that you pay extra money for subsequent children (something that many affluent families are happy to do, although can be a significant burden for poor families)

In addition, the Chinese gov't has been slowly loosening restrictions around the one-child policy, and has plans to continue to do so.

However...they still plan to keep a tight control on population growth. They may relax restrictions to allow two kids, but are gonna' keep a tight cap on anything more than that.

And as much as I dislike it, I agree with it. There was discussion above about how many developed countries are experiencing significant decline in population growth, without the need for such policies. In general, greater affluence tends to lead to lower birth rates. And this is happening in China, too...wealthy urban families are tending to feel far less pressure to have kids, and have a preference for only one or two (or in some cases, choose to have no kids at all).

But in poor, rural populations -- which still make up the majority of the Chinese population -- the desire for large families is still very strong, and despite gov't efforts to control the number of kids, many rural families will still have as many kids as they can.

The problem with this is that it essentially perpetuates an endless cycle of poverty. Because they have many kids, they don't have enough money to provide adequate education. The kids grow up to be pretty much exactly like their parents (and numerous studies in China have shown that poor families who have fewer kids rise out of poverty faster than poor families who have many kids), stuck in poverty and having lots of kids in turn.

Urban families have a lot of money, which is spent on only one or two kids, providing significant resources; rural families have little money, which may be split between three, four, five, or even more kids.

Education is a huge factor (in particular, making rural families understand that smaller family size does lead to greater opportunities to escape poverty); but it is very slow, and fighting thousands of years of tradition that "large families equal stability and security".

My position is that laws to limit the number of children are still essential; but the question of how many children should be allowed, or of how to enforce such laws, is a much trickier one, and I don't have any easy answers.

Another problem the rural poor populations face is a lack of a safety net on which they can depend if they get sick or old. Traditionally, the kids provided that safety net. A different safety net needs to be offered as incentive to stop making kids.

 

[crimresearch]

So it went something like this?

Only one baby allowed!

Abort, abort, abort, male, keep!

Ok, ok, we're about 50 million women short now. You can have multiple babies, up to 3.

Abort, abort, abort, male, keep! Abort, abort, abort, male, keep! Abort, abort, abort, male, keep! Three males, yes!


That's...sick. I've already prophesied the dangers of having a hundred million angry young men without women for partners. Now...?

Now, Japan is reaping the harvest of that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Free

Soon it will be China, and their political and legal system is ill equipped to handle it.

 

[Francesca R]

Japan doesn't have (and has never had) a distorted sex ratio of births. China has the most distorted one in the world for a country.

 

[crimresearch]

Japan doesn't have (and has never had) a distorted sex ratio of births. China has the most distorted one in the world for a country.

http://www.health.am/ab/more/japan_male_population_shrinks_first_time_on_record/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4065647.stm

But since 1970, the U.S. and Japan have experienced a downward shift in this male-to-female birth ratio, researchers report in the online edition of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives
http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/04/16/us-male-births-idUSCOL66726420070416


And:
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90882/7012887.html