one child policy geography case study

The one-child policy in China

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The initiative

The challenge

The public impact

• Stakeholder engagement Weak
• Political commitment Strong
• Public confidence Fair
• Clarity of objectives Good
• Strength of evidence Fair
• Feasibility Good
• Management Good
• Measurement Weak
• Alignment Fair

Bibliography

The Chinese central government  officially established the "one-child policy"  in 1979 , although several initiatives for birth control had already been in place since the early 1970s and had already achieved significant reductions in the national birth rate. It aimed to control population growth, which the government began to see as a threat to the country's economic ambitions. Its basis was that a couple was allowed to have only one child. Initial efforts began in the 1960s as a critical response to the famine facing the population. "A push under the slogan 'Late, Long and Few' was successful: China's population growth dropped by half from 1970 to 1976. But it soon levelled off, prompting officials to seek more drastic measures. In 1979 they introduced a policy requiring couples from China's ethnic Han majority to have only one child (the law has largely exempted ethnic minorities)." [2]

To enforce this, the government granted certain benefits to those who complied (increased access to education for all, plus childcare and healthcare offered to families that followed this rule) and other measures which penalised those who did not comply, e.g., fines and no access to these benefits. [3]  Similarly, the policy increased the legal age for marriage to 22 years for men and 20 years for women in a bid to prevent population growth. [4]

The birth control policies implemented varied at the national and local level. National policies, such as the one-child policy, were applicable throughout the whole country, but local policies, such as penalties for above-quota births, varied between regions, such as rural and urban, or between provinces. [5]

China had been actively influencing its population growth for several years, beginning after the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, when Mao Zedong encouraged the population to grow in order to increase manpower. Although there was no official policy at the time, government propaganda condemned contraceptives and introduced other measures that led to the population doubling over the next few years.

This led to unexpected challenges as food supply became scarce, and from 1959 to 1961, the Great Chinese Famine killed an estimated 15 to 30 million people. As a result, the government started to reverse its campaign. "In 1979, the government introduced the one-child policy, under which most couples are allowed to have only one child or else face the possibility of fines, sterilisations, and abortions." [1]

The aggressive implementation of the one-child policy in China had significant impact on the growth of the birth rate and population in the country. The birth rate in China fell from 1979 onwards, and the rate of population growth dropped to 0.7%.

This caused unexpected imbalances in the demographic development of the country.  Due to a traditional preference for boys, large numbers of female babies ended up homeless or in orphanages, and in some cases were killed. "In 2000, it was reported that 90 percent of foetuses aborted in China were female. As a result, the gender balance of the Chinese population has become distorted. Today it is thought that men outnumber women by more than 60 million." [6]

Another unintended long-term effect of this policy was that low birth rates also led to a rapid change in the population age pyramid. A study conducted before the end of the policy predicted that "the number of Chinese citizens over the age of 65 will soar to 219 million in 2030 and grow to make up a quarter of China's entire population by 2050. This means a significant portion of residents will age out of the labour force." [7]

Stakeholder engagement

The main stakeholder behind this initiative was the central government, which was very concerned that uncontrolled growth in the population could threaten the country's ambitions for prosperity. There is no evidence of consultations with stakeholders at the local or institutional level before this policy was implemented. However, there were incentives put in place to ensure the compliance of local officials, in the form of fiscal and career rewards for achieving birth targets, and penalties for falling short.  Officials could even be demoted for allowing too many above-quota births in their community, which meant that they would lose all future income and other benefits associated with their roles. [8]

The radical nature of the policy and the risk of non-compliance opened up many opportunities for corruption. "A number of anti-corruption drives have taken place over the years, and recent reports indicate that in some areas Chinese officials themselves are among the greatest violators of family planning policies." [9]

Political commitment

Curbing population growth became a major priority for the Chinese government. "Family planning is accorded an extremely high priority by the Chinese government, which is worried that China's immense and growing population could offset the gains made by economic reforms." [10] Deng Xiaoping, who led the country from 1978 to 1989, made this clear in a statement on the perceived necessity of the one-child policy. "In order for China to achieve the four modernisations, it must overcome at least two important roadblocks. The first one is weak economic standing. The second one is a large population with limited arable land. Now the population is more than 900 million, 80 percent of which are farmers. The coin of a large population has two sides. Under the condition of insufficient development, all the problems related to food, education and employment are severe ones. We should deepen the implementation of the family planning policy, and even if the population does not increase in the following years, the problem of population will still exist over a long period of time." [11]

Significant funds were allocated to the initiative through the budget for family planning, which was increased by approximately 18% per year throughout the 1980s, and after 1991 was doubled to USD1.1 billion. [12]

Public confidence

The Chinese government rewarded those who complied with the one-child policy in numerous ways, such as preferential housing, food subsidies, medical care, education, a monthly health allowance, job promotions, and special bonuses for volunteering for sterilisation. [13]  However, the inflexibility and swiftness with which the government implemented the one-child policy also generated significant opposition from the public, exacerbated by reports of forced abortions and other human rights issues. "Although the one-child policy — and the accompanying mass campaign of sterilisation and induced abortion — led to a decline in fertility, it also caused a popular uproar and ignited strong resistance, especially in China's vast rural areas." [14]

The number of forced abortions and sterilisations caused widespread bitterness and resentment. "'I support the family planning policy, but not their methods,' said Ji Shuqiang, 42, working behind the cash register at the village store. 'If they find a woman who's pregnant, no matter how far along, they'll make you have an abortion.' An older man, who despite the urging of the others was afraid to give his name, said his wife had been sterilised 34 years ago after the birth of their only child, a daughter. He was still furious. 'We hate family planning more than anything else. We don't agree with the government's policy on this.'" [15]

Clarity of objectives

There were several growth targets established by the government through their initial campaigns before the one-child policy was put in place: the fourth five-year plan in 1970 was the first to include targets for the population growth rate, and the target set for 1980 was a growth rate of 1%. However, as the government realised that their targets were unrealistic, most population growth rate targets were abandoned in the early 1980s. When the one-child policy was implemented, the official policy was to aim for a population of around 1.2 billion in 2000. [16]

Regulations included restrictions on family size, late marriage and childbearing, and the spacing of children (in cases in which second children were permitted). There were also a number of exceptions, including: families in which the first child had a disability or both parents worked in high-risk occupations (such as mining) or were themselves from one-child families (in some areas).  In rural areas (where around 70% of the population lived), a second child was normally allowed after five years, but this sometimes only applied if the first child were a girl — a clear acknowledgment of the traditional preference for boys. A third child could also be allowed among some ethnic minorities and in underpopulated areas. [17]

Apart form the overall population target, there is no evidence of clearer objectives allowing to track the policy. This, coupled with the variability of guidelines explained above, made the policy extremely difficult to monitor.

Strength of evidence

Feasibility

There was a range of initiatives put in place and significant resources allocated to the implementation of the one-child policy. Family planning was coordinated at the federal level by the State Family Planning Commission (SFPC), which had approximately 520,000 full time cadres, and the Birth Planning Association, which assisted government in enforcement and implementation, had over 83 million part-time employees working at 1 million locations throughout China. [19] In addition, some 900,000 family planning associations had an estimated membership of between 36 and 50 million volunteers. [20]  The government also increased the family planning budget by approximately 18% per year throughout the 1980s, and doubled it after 1991. [21]

The Communist Party published the new Marriage Law in 1980, mandating that couples were obliged to practise family planning, with a limit of one child for each family. This gave legal force to the policy. [22] However, clear communication was limited, and its interpretation and implementation were generally left to local officials to define in response to local conditions. "Sources indicate that implementation of family planning regulations differs from region to region and even within specific localities". [23]

The central government led the policy at the national level, with the State Family Planning Bureau setting targets and policy direction. Family planning committees at provincial and county levels were responsible of developing local strategies for implementation. [24] Similarly, Population and Family Planning Commissions at the national, provincial and local levels were expected to promote the policy, register births, and carry out family inspections. Provincial governments enforced the policy through a mix of rewards and penalties enforced at the discretion of local officials. “They include economic incentives for compliance and substantial fines, confiscation of belongings, and dismissal from work for non-compliance.” [25]

The evaluation of officials was tied to the ability to meet birth quotas within their jurisdictions. “The leaders of units who meet these birth quotas are more likely to get promotions and bonuses. If a particular area does not meet its birth quota, meaning that the number of children born is in excess of the number the government allows, the leaders of the local population control units would be held responsible for this failure and be disqualified from promotions or bonuses." [26] The establishment of unreasonable targets led to widespread corruption and meddling in the reporting of official figures, which is one of the most significant negative effects of the management method that was used.

Measurement

The policy required restrictions on family sizes and birth figures at the local and national levels, and Population and Family Planning Commissions were responsible for implementing this mandate. “This policy stated that citizens must obtain a birth certificate before the birth of their children. In 1980, the birth-quota system was established to monitor population growth. Under this system, the government set target goals for each region. Local officials were mainly held responsible for making sure that population growth totals did not exceed target goals. If target goals were not met, the local officials were punished by law or by loss of privileges.” [27]

However, it not clear whether a consistent methodology was used for this,  or appropriate measurements actually took place, as both the public and enforcement officials had strong incentives to conceal the real numbers. The rigour and penalties applied when enforcing the policy led people to avoid reporting for fear of repercussions, and this also affected the accurate monitoring of outcomes. "The 1995 population survey reported average male:female ratios of 108:100 in rural areas. But this is not just because of sex-selective abortion (which is now illegal, though undoubtedly still occurs), but also because of failure to report female births." [28]

The main driver for the central government in curtailing growth of the population was that it perceived its increase as detrimental to the growth of the economy. At the local level, however, these issues were not so relevant, so there was a need to provide a motivation for local officials to enforce the one-child policy. It used a quota reward system for Planning Officials who carried out the birth control policies. If they did not meet quotas, they were either punished or would lose the opportunity to earn promotions. [29]

For the population at large, the government applied  incentives and sanctions to encourage compliance with the policy's goals. "People were to be encouraged to have only one child through a package of financial and other incentives, such as preferential access to housing, schools, and health services. Discouragement of larger families included financial levies on each additional child and other sanctions which ranged from social pressure to curtailed career prospects for those in government jobs. Specific measures varied from province to province.” [30]

An Evaluation of 30 Years of the One-Child Policy in China , 10 November 2009, The Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission

Challenging Myths About China's One-Child Policy, Martin King Whyte et al, 2015, The China Journal

China: Family planning laws, enforcement and exceptions in the provinces of Guangdong and Fujian (2010-September 2012), Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada

China one-child policy leads to forced abortions, mothers' deaths, Barbara Demick, 15 June 2012, Los Angeles Times

China One-Child Policy: Some unintended Consequences, David Howden and Yang Zhou, 2014, Institute of Economic Affairs

China's One-Child Policy, Laura Fitzpatrick, 27 July 2009, Time

China's one child family policy, Penny Kane and Ching Y Choi, 9 October 1999, US National Library of Medicine

Couples must wait for law to catch up with China's ‘second-child' policy, 31 October 2015, The Inquirer: China Daily/Asia News Network

History of the Chinese Family Planning Program: 1970-2010, Cuntong Wang, October 2011, Contraception

Managing population change - Case study: China, BBC

One-Child Policy Update, January 1995, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada

Population Control and Consequences in China, Jamie Cook, 5 December 1999, University of Nebraska

Prepared Statement for Harry Wu, 5 November 2009, Director of Laogai Research Foundation, Human Rights Commission in Washington, DC

See How the One-Child Policy Changed China, Aileen Clarke, 13 November 2015, National Geographic

The Effect of China's One-Child Family Policy after 25 Years, Therese Hesketh, et al, 15 September 2005, The New England Journal of Medicine

The Effect of the One-Child Policy on Fertility in China: Identification Based on the Differences-in-Differences, Hongbin Li et al, 11 August 2005, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

The One Child Family Policy, W X Zhu, US National Library of Medicine

When a Son is Born: The Impact of Fertility Patterns on Family Finance in Rural China, Weili Ding and Yuan Zhang, March 2011, Queens University

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China’s One Child Policy

Context China has been the world’s most populous country for centuries and today makes up one-fifth of the world’s population. The country’s population of 1.3 billion in the early 2000s is projected to grow by another 100 million by 2050. India—with its higher fertility levels – is forecast to move ahead of China in total population size by 2035. China covers about the same geographic area as the United States, although its population is nearly five times greater. In addition, because of rugged mountains in the west and vast desert areas in central China, the population is concentrated within a surprisingly small area along the East and South.

Birth rate trends and management Fertility rates have been slashed in China in one of the most ambitious state attempts to control population growth. The government feared a looming crisis in the 1960s where every 3 years another 55million people where added top the population. The government feared a Malthusian crisis where population growth would completely outstrip resource availabillity. They launched into China’s now famous one child policy in 1979, after Chinese demographer Liu Zeng calculated China’s OPTIMUM population at 700million. The government set the limit at one child per family– a total fertility rate of 1! The state offered inducements for having only one child such as; Free education Priority housing Pension Child care Family benefits They also had a rigorous range of punishments if the one child rule was flouted (which it clearly was, look at the fertility graph, it never reaches 1!) including; Losing all of the benefits listed above Fines of up to 15% of the families income In addition, couples could only marry at 22 for a man and 20 for a woman, and had to apply to the state for permission to first marry and then have a child. This reduces the reproductive “lifespan” of that couple. The policy courted lots of controversy, and China’s imbalance in male to female ratio is evident in the figures about China’s population. It was claimed in the South China post that once couples knew the sex of a baby some would abort if it was a girl. This is known as female infanticide. This is because the Chinese value males in their society more than females because they carry the family name. It has been documented that some women were forced into having abortions if they conceived a second child, and persistent offenders were offered sterilisation. The local factories and communities also had the granny police – who monitored and spied on prospective mothers. This policy was not enforced in the same manner across China, and in some areas it was possible to have more than one child, particularly in rural areas where children were needed to work on farmers. This policy has had huge social ramifications for China – yes it has reduced the population growth, but there have been many secondary problems emanate from the policy. One, it has led to the phenomenon of “Little Emporers”, spoilt single children who get everything they want! It has also destroyed some family way of life, no brothers or sisters, no Aunts and Uncles. It also has future ramifications for China’s dependency ratio – one single child to look after 2 elderly grandparents! This means that many Chinese simply don’t work in the formal economy but work to look after their ageing parents. This means that they are not contributing to the economy and in the past China has relaxed the one child rule. In certain cities today it has been completely abandoned as cities search for economic growth and a workforce that can supply it in the future. The last impact has been to create an army of bachelors, competing for the lower number of females available.

Death rate trends, life expectancy and management Life Expectancy has increased considerably in China, especially since the cultural revolution of China and the creation of the Peoples Republic of China.

Historical change: China’s mortality has declined dramatically over the past 50 years, especially in the early years of the People’s Republic. The official death rate in 1953 was 14 deaths per 1,000 people, but it was probably much higher because mortality was chronically underestimated. The official death rate had dropped below 8 by 1970 and below 7 by 2000. China’s mortality fell in part thanks to land and other resources to help ensure access by even the poorest citizens. The new government also began to develop massive public health programs. Early programs focused on relatively inexpensive goals and campaigns—such as local environmental clean-up programs and training programs for local health personnel—that contributed to lower mortality. China’s mortality decline was interrupted at several points by temporary but often severe disruptions tied to political, economic, or social changes. The most notable was the Great Leap Forward: In 1958, the Chinese government launched the Great Leap Forward, a massive effort to rapidly increase agricultural and industrial production. The program was a colossal failure and, ironically, caused one of the largest famines in human history. The Chinese government kept the details of the era secret for many years, releasing some data only in the 1980s. Demographers and others who pieced together the available information have estimated that more than 30 million people died between 1958 and 1961 as a result of the Great Leap Forward. Infants were especially vulnerable. Infant mortality rates spiked in 1958 and again in 1961. Adult mortality surged in 1960. As the country recovered, mortality levels declined and life expectancy at birth increased—from 35 years in 1949 to 72 years in 2001. China’s entry into the Free Trade system and market reform has further increased access to medical care and has built on state systems such as “barefoot doctors” who helped in rural districts, and immunisation against polio and measles. The current problem is that there is a gap between services available in rural and urban areas. Recent change: The average life expectancy of Chinese increased to 73 in 2005, 1.6 years more than in 2000, according to the Chinese Ministry of Health. Life expectancy was only 36.5 years in 1949 when the People’s Republic of China was founded. The infant death rate decreased to 1.53% last year, down from 2.55% in 2003. The reasons for this are multiple, but much can be attributed to;

Massive investment in Health Care provision – the number of health organizations jumped to 315,000 while the government spent 1.05 trillion Yuan (US$144.27 billion), or 4.82% of China’s gross domestic product, on health care.

Investment in stemming the potential AIDS epidemic – about 1.8 billion Yuan of the central government’s budget was devoted to AIDS treatment in 2007 as the number of people estimated to be living with HIV on the mainland may have risen to 700,000 in the same year.

30 million people were estimated to have joined the country’s medical insurance network by the end of 2007 after a basic medical insurance trial program was launched in July.

In addition, the rural cooperative medical insurance system, initiated in 2003 to offer farmers basic health care, covered 730 million rural residents, or 86% of the rural population, by the end of September Migration controls and schemes

China’s one-child policy

Perception surveys

GCSE courses require you to evaluate how countries try to influence population change. China provides a classic case study of such a strategy.

• Volume 22, 2010/ 2011
• Human Geography

Charlotte Peel

For the People’s Republic of China, 1 October 2009 was a special day: this National Day celebration marked 60 years since the takeover of mainland China by the Communist Party of China, in 1949.

After the Communists took control China’s population grew rapidly, from 563 million in 1950 to 1 billion in the early 1980s, as death rates fell and birth rates rose.

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China's One Child Policy - Geography GCSE case study

Subject: Geography

Age range: 14-16

Resource type: Assessment and revision

Last updated

23 July 2016

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Evaluating China's One Child Policy

Evaluation of One Child Policy

During the 1970s, China felt the indenting need for a drastic policy that would be able to control its ever-expanding population and to begin development in its country and thus the one child policy was born, if the policy had not been instituted china would have faced severe famine and starvation as it would not have been able to cope with rapid growth. The policy was administrated in September 1981 and they called it ‘birth planning’ by which families were given a maximum limit of one child per family however in rural areas, couples were allowed to have two children and this was to help need on agricultural land and farming; those who try to breach this law would face severe consequences. The policy was considered as one of history’s ‘most ambitious pieces of social engineering’ as quoted from The Economist since the policy heavily intervened with families plans for the future and affected how most chines families would function in terms of having children. The policy governed by the Chinese government was said not to last no longer than a single generation and yet here in 2013, the policy still continues to proceed and there are little or no signs of a new policy or removal of this policy from the country.

Administration Of Policy

The policy in china was very drastic and therefore it contained many punishments for anyone who tried to breach the policy and the government also deployed many forces of administration to make sure that people were being monitored and that no one was trying for a second child. There were family-planning workers in every single workplace to grant families the ability to have a child if they had been on the waiting list and also at this point the couple would be presented with a special card which gives them authority to claim governmental benefits such as free education, free kindergarten facilities, free healthcare etc. on birth of the child. Police called the ‘granny police’, who were not actual police but represented the role of making sure woman were practicing using contraception and to had the objective of reporting on pregnancies so that the local authority would be able to work out whether a family is trying to have a second child illegally.  Female women were also given education on the use of contraception and this was to try minimising the amount of unexpected pregnancies.

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Family planning officials levy huge fines of up to £20,000 from those who try to have a second child and this fine account for the estimated value of public services that the forbidden child would have received over its lifetime. Furthermore, in some areas the couple would have been stripped of their house, jobs and even the ability to live in a particular area of the country. Also in earlier time they would have been forfeited their rations and clothing benefits. Furthermore, women would have been given forced steralisations or contraceptive pills and their chances of being able to have children ever again would be removed if they were found guilty of trying to have a second child and this would impose that they would never be able to have a child even if they decide to migrate to another country. This kind of steralisations was only existent in certain provinces of China and it is currently completely abolished from all parts of china as it was considered to unforgiving for a punishment.

Changes Generated by The One Child Policy

Without need to say, the obvious: the one child policy had caused a drop in the fertility rate in China. From the starting point of the policy in 1981 to now the birth rate has dropped from an above average 2.9 to 1.7 and this has lead to understand that the policy was successful and that it has tackled one of the country’s main concern which is an ever-expanding population. Furthermore, this drop has claimed to prevent up to 400 million births, which would otherwise have kept China’s population at 1.7 billion currently compared to the 1.3 billion that it actually is today. However, despite showing a drop in birth rate after the beginning of this policy, there are statistics that show that China’s fertility rates fell drastically during the 1970s and that the policy did not influence the drop in birth rates much. This suggests that the fertility rate was naturally decreasing so there was no need for the policy. This suggests that the policy did not control the country’s population greatly because the fertility rates had dropped severely just before the commencement of the policy. Therefore the implementation of such a severe policy has now indented Chinese people’s concept of families and even if the policy was to be removed people will still continue to have few children and this would not have been the case if fertility rates were allowed to naturally decrease to make the population eventually stable much alike how most other countries have progressed through the demographic transition such as Russia, Germany and Japan. The rapid fall in fertility rate just before the one child policy is clearly shown in the graph that is on the previous page; the graph was taken from the GapMinder webpage which holds information about the world demographic and thus is very reliable.

Another negative impact of the one child policy was a case of female infanticide. In fact, this is an interesting concern as it has lead to china presenting a population where there are about 120 Chinese men for every 100 Chinese women and thus there is a shortage of women. There was a severe amount of female infanticide for several reasons. Firstly a male child was seen as more superior for the use on farmland and for the use on agricultural land as men were seen as stronger characters compared to women. Secondly, only the male would be able to carry forward the family name and in China there was a great cultural desire to carry forward a family name to keep the family advancing through generations. Finally, men are usually the main income-earners, either because they are more employable or earn higher wages for the same work, or because they are able to do more agricultural work in subsistence economies. Since male babies have a greater income potential, they are more desired over females and thus female births were usually abandoned or killed. There are some stories of extreme discomfort where female babies have been flushed down toilets and drowned, as they were not considered valuable to Chinese family.

Furthermore, the shortage of females in China has lead to a generation where there are “too many men”, and this was caused by the desire to have a male child in the family. The result of the one child policy has meant that there are 1000 million women whom would else be existent if the policy wasn’t introduced and thus this social engineering has converted the a balanced gender country into an imbalanced country with more men. This has lead to desire to import woman known as human trafficking where women are smuggled using from Burma and North Korea and the women are used as prostitutes or sold as wives and domestic servants in parts of china. This is a negative outcome of the policy by which women are used inappropriately and are illegally imported from other countries. Furthermore, it is expected that by the year 2030 there could be up to 20-30million bachelors in chine whom are unable to find a partner and this would further increase the desire and temptation to want female prostitutes and this will create an illegal transportation of women to china from neighboring countries.

Another disadvantage of the policy is that a generation of not enough children is developing in china and this results in not enough children to look after parents which could mean that the country could grow old before it is able to develop it’s economy and becoming rich by limiting the mouths to feed as it is trying to do so using the one child policy. In china this lack of children is called the ‘4-2-1’ dilemma and as The Economist suggests this is where each couple has the job of looking after four parents and one child. This creates a dilemma as the couple’s parents become aged and need the help of the couple and thus the couple have the cost of having to look after their parents all on their own as they would not have any siblings and thus china has created a problem for families trying to develop as they will have a shortage of money to spend elsewhere in the economy to try boost the countries development stage. The imbalanced structure of china’s population also hints that the working force will come to an end by 2020 and therefore this would mean that the country would not be able to further develop and this has again raised pressure on the Chinese government to introduce further amendments to the one child policy. For example, Hu Jintao suggested allowing more than one birth but between longer gaps and also the scrapping of the birth quota so that couples could still have a child even if the maximum number of children in a certain area is reached. This would help to regain a large population of workers in the future generation to continue with the countries development without having to deal with another expanding population.

The article presented by The Economist has dealt with many defects of the one child policy including the extortionate amount of female infanticide, the illegal need for a second child, female imports, ‘4-2-1’ issue and the fact that the country could have still developed without the policy as statistics showed that fertility rates were naturally decreasing as people become more educated and this would therefore have reduced to country’s large population and allowed the country to develop as the government would have to feed fewer people and also if the policy had not been introduced there would not be effects one some females lives who have been sterilized permanently after the birth of the first child because this would prevent the mother from having another child ever. Also, the Chinese government are now unable to scrape the policy because they have not alternatives that could be administrated on the scale of the one child policy and therefore the government suggests ‘we will stick to the family-planning policy for decades’ and this implies that the removal of the policy would have a considerate difference on China’s population and that it could possibly improve the gender imbalance which is not of great interest to china as demographers suggest the removal of the policy would suggest a rapid increase in population once again and this would mean that the country would not be able to achieve its goal which is to become a well developed country with a high GDP.

The charts below show what would happen to china’s population and its structure by 2050 if the policy was to be removed and as the first graph clearly suggests, the one child policy has been heavily successful in maintaining a smaller population and emphasis should be placed on the fact it is just a smaller population. Although, the population is smaller the structure of the population between men and women and groups of elderly, working class as well as those under 15 is highly imbalanced and as the chart on the right clearly imposes, if the policy was removed the demographic structure will become more balanced once again.

References:

AQA AS Geography (Philip Allan)

AQA AS Geography (Nelson Thornes)

Briefing: China’s one-child policy (09/10/2010 – The Economist, page 13)

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• Author Type Student
• Word Count 1959
• Page Count 3
• Level AS and A Level
• Subject Geography
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A country with a high population growth - China

A country with a rate of high population growth – China

Many countries have introduced policies to promote or reduce population growth. This usually involves encouraging people to have more or fewer children.

China’s One-Child Policy is one of the most famous examples of a policy to reduce rapid population growth.

Why was China’s One-Child Policy introduced?

• China’s population grew rapidly during the 1950s and 1960s.
• There were not enough resources to support the rapid growth in population.
• In 1979 the Chinese government introduces the One-Child Policy, designed to limit population growth.

How did China’s One-Child Policy aim to reduce the rate of population growth?

• Couples were encouraged to have only one child in return for financial and welfare benefits.
• Men could not get married until they were 22 and women 20.
• Couples had to apply to get married and have a baby.
• Couples received a 10% salary/wage bonus for only having one child, along with free education, family benefits and priority access to housing.
• Couples who did not conform lost benefits and received fines.
• Women who became pregnant for the second time were forced to have abortions. Some had forced sterilisation.
• Work-place bosses could grant permission for workers to have a child.
• The government promoted the benefits of having a small family

The policy prevented hundreds of millions of babies being born, so China’s population is smaller than it would have been.

What were the social impacts of China’s One-Child Policy?

• There are few retirement homes in China, therefore most Chinese children will have to care for four grandparents as well as their own parents.
• There are not enough people to look after the elderly, so retirement homes will need to be built.
• Men outnumber women in China as Chinese culture favours boys. This is the result of baby girls being abandoned or aborted throughout the policy. It will be difficult for men to find a partner.

What were the economic impacts of China’s One-Child Policy?

• The increasingly ageing population will need financial support in the future, including medical care and a pension.
• From 2025 it is estimated that there will be more elderly people in China than children. This will result in elderly people having to work longer.
• Economic expansion and growth could be limited in the future due to the declining size of the workforce.
• There will be a reduction in the tax-paying working population so the government will need to increase taxes to provide services for the population.

What were the positive impacts of China’s One-Child Policy?

The map below shows changes in China’s population growth over time. Notice how natural increase falls with the introduction of the One Child Policy

The graph below illustrates the impact of the One Child Policy on fertility rates, expressed as babies per woman.

• The fertility rate in China has dropped, reducing future strain on resources.
• The average number of children per woman in China dropped from 6 to 2.5 between 1950 and 2005.
• An estimated 300-400 million births were avoided.
• Over-population, particularly in south-east China, has been reduced, relieving pressure on services and housing.

The future of China’s One-Child Policy

Since 2013 the policy has been gradually reduced as concerns have risen that China’s low fertility rates will lead to a demographic crisis and future labour shortage.

Initially, the policy changed to allow couples to have another child if their firstborn was a girl. In 2016 the policy was further relaxed to allow couples to have two children regardless of the gender of the first-born.

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

Stuart gietel-basten.

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

2 Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Beijing, PRC

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

Associated Data

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

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.

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

In this paper, we aim to assess the impact of the 1973 and 1979 family planning policies and to explain why there was no significant rise in the fertility rate observed after the birth control policy was relaxed in 2015. For this purpose, we use the Synthetic Control Method proposed by Abadie et al. [ 20 , 21 ] to the context of fertility behavior. The nature of the synthetic control method is to find countries with very similar fertility and other fertility-related demographic and socioeconomic features as China before the policy intervention by giving more weights to countries with the most similarities. For the post-intervention period, the fertility rate of similar countries with their corresponding weights is used to construct the synthetic China TFR, which represents the fertility rate if there were no policy intervention. The difference between the synthetic TFR and the observed TFR after the intervention is the impact of the policy. We formulate the relationship between the with- and without-intervention TFR as follows:

T F R i t 73 − 79 are the total fertility rate of country i after 1973 but before 1979 while T F R i t 79 o n w a r d are the total fertility rate of country i in time after 1979. T F R i t N o 73 p o l i c y and T F R i t w i t h 73 b u t n o 79 p o l i c y represent the TFRs assuming that there were no interventions and the TFRs assuming that there was only the 1973 intervention, respectively. D i t 73 and D i t 79 are dummy variables that take the value of one if country i is exposed to the respective intervention, which depends on whether the time t is pre- or post- the policy year. α i t 73 and α i t 79 capture the effect of the interventions in 1973 and 1979, respectively.

There are altogether J +1 countries and T time periods. For simplicity, we use T F R i t N to represent either T F R i t N o 73 p o l i c y or T F R i t w i t h 73 b u t n o 79 p o l i c y in the following deductions. Suppose that T F R i t N is given by a factor model:

where δ t is constant across all countries and only varies with time. Z i is a vector of observable variables that we believe affect the fertility rate but is not affected by the intervention policy. μ i represents an unobservable factor affecting fertility rate and varies across countries. ε it is the error term with zero means. To simplify, we equate i = 1 for China and T 0 (either 1973 or 1979) is the policy intervention year with 1≤ T 0 ≤ T .

We sum up the left-hand side and the right-hand side of Eq ( 3 ) for each period t before the intervention ( T F R i t = T F R i t N ) in all countries except China using different weights, which can be expressed as:

The optimal w j * achieves the following target:

The optimal w j * are the weights applied to replicate China’s fertility rate and other characteristics by using the fertility rates and other characteristics of all the other countries.

Therefore, for the period after intervention, the impact of the intervention can be estimated by:

We obtain the optimal w j * by minimizing the distance between ‖ X 1 − WX 0 ‖ where:

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.

Note: For the pre-1973, the pre-intervention period for TFR is 1955–1973 while for the others are 1965–1973.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Note: For the pre-1973 period, altogether, 57 countries were used to construct the Synth China. Here we only present countries with weights higher than 1%. For the pre-1979 but post- 1973 period, altogether, 21 countries were used to construct the Synth China. Here we only present countries with weights higher than 1%.

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

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.

Funding Statement

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.

Data Availability