China's one-child policy

It’s 1980, and the People's Republic of China has been experiencing a population boom! In only 30 years the population has doubled from 500 million to one billion… and it’s still growing! The government is concerned. There isn’t enough food or housing to support all these people. Something needs to be done to slow down how fast the population is growing.

So, the government makes an extreme decision. In 1980, they put a law in place, so that most families are only allowed to have one child. This is called the one-child policy. Breaking the rules and having more than one child, comes with serious financial penalties. Often the fines cost more money than a family makes in a year.

Years pass, and the government strictly controls how people plan their families with the one-child policy. Before the one-child policy, the population was growing fast - nearly 3 percent per year! Now, it's 2016 and the population is only growing by 0.5 percent per year. So, the one-child policy worked! … Right? Well yes… but it also caused a lot of problems.

When the one-child policy is in place, people want baby boys more than they want baby girls. For thousands of years, sons have been very important in Chinese society. Sons carry on the family name, inherit all money and property, and provide for their parents. So, when families are only allowed one child, it isn’t always a happy occasion when a girl is born. Sometimes pregnancies are terminated.

Many baby girls are put up for adoption or abandoned. So, after a while, there are more boys than girls. The gender balance of the growing generation is affected. Today, China is one of the world’s most gender imbalanced countries. In a population of 1.39 billion, there are about 30 million more men than women!

Without partners, many of these men are not able to start families, and won’t have children to support them in their old age. And supporting people in their old age is a big concern in China! It is now estimated that by 2050, 1 in 3 people in China will be older than 60. That equals 430 million elderly people! Traditionally, sons care for their parents, therefore very few elderly people in China have health insurance or receive money for their retirement.

It is not yet clear how they will be supported. Many elderly people are retiring from their jobs, but, due to the one-child policy, there are not enough young adults to replace them. It’s hard to know how much China’s economy will be affected by its aging population. Before, the problem was too many people. Now, the problem is the opposite: There are not enough young people, especially young women, in China!

So in 2016, the government decides to reverse its policy. It wants people to start having two children, instead of just one. China is still the most populated country on earth… for now. But changing the one-child policy has not caused lots of births like the government hoped it would. A lot of things have changed in China since 1980 when the policy first started.

Since then, 500 million people have moved from the countryside to cities. This urbanization happened very fast. Living in the city and raising children can cost a lot of money. That is one reason why many people are not interested in having big families anymore. Despite the government’s efforts, China’s population problems probably aren’t going away anytime soon.