One Child Left Behind
China today announced an end to its controversial "One Child" policy, the law for 35 years that punished most couples who gave birth to more than one child. Now two is the new one: all couples will be allowed to have two children. The stated purpose of the move is "to balance population development and address the challenge of an ageing population." Example coverage: Xinhua press release (English). CNN article. Guardian article.
There are a multitude of points I could make about these topic, ranging from moral to scientific and beyond. For now I'll just make a point about law and order: The One Child policy obviously was a failure, in a macro sense. If it were tightly enforced-- or even just mostly enforced-- China's population would have dropped over time. Instead China's population has ncrease every single year. Understand that you need a procreation rate of about 2.1 children per woman to maintain stable population. China's overall birth rate must have been consistently higher than that figure. For all the parents in the past 35 years who've given birth to just one child by choice or by force of law, there have got to be parents who've produced 3 or more. It's a mathematical certainty. The law's exceptions that, e.g., allowed farm families to have a second child do not explain this variance. There must have been significant gaps in respect for the law and the government's enforcement of it.
There are a multitude of points I could make about these topic, ranging from moral to scientific and beyond. For now I'll just make a point about law and order: The One Child policy obviously was a failure, in a macro sense. If it were tightly enforced-- or even just mostly enforced-- China's population would have dropped over time. Instead China's population has ncrease every single year. Understand that you need a procreation rate of about 2.1 children per woman to maintain stable population. China's overall birth rate must have been consistently higher than that figure. For all the parents in the past 35 years who've given birth to just one child by choice or by force of law, there have got to be parents who've produced 3 or more. It's a mathematical certainty. The law's exceptions that, e.g., allowed farm families to have a second child do not explain this variance. There must have been significant gaps in respect for the law and the government's enforcement of it.