China's one Child Policy

How would you feel if the country you live in enforced a government program that limits every couple to one child each? More importantly that government thinks the one child you are permitted to have should be a boy. Believe it or not a policy like this actually exists today. This government program, called the one-child policy, is currently enforced in China. China started a civil war that lasted more than 20 years. Afterward, their new leader, Mao Zedong, called for couples to have more children to make a stronger China. He also forced farmers to abandon their farms and work in factories in order to make China more industrialized. These events led to food shortages and an overpopulated China. In the late 1960s Mao changed his mind about the population and suggested for couples to marry late and wait a long time before having kids. Between 1970 and 1979, China's fertility rate was cut in half. But even then the Communist Party officials feared China's growing population. In 1980 they introduced the one-child policy. The one-child policy had negative effects on the population of China. It caused a major gender imbalance due to the government favoring boys over girls and generally was completely unnecessary.

In “China's Population” it shows that even after the one-child policy begins, China's population continued to grow. It also showed that from present day to sixteen years from now, the population is expected to grow to an estimated 1.4 billion. However within the next decades after 2030, the population is expected to decrease by a few million every decade. The small drop in population is due to the elderly of China dying over time. With this in mind, it could be said that the population would have dropped eventually without the one-child polii. In “China's One Child Policy at 30” it says that before the announcement of the policy the fertility rate went from 5.8% to 2.7% within ten years. It also shows that China's fertility rates from 1979 to 2008 dropped less in comparison to countries without the one-child policy. So, the one-child policy is not the main force accounting for China's low fertility today, as stated in “China's One Child Policy at 30.” The one-child policy has played a small part in China's fertility rate reduction. But with everything that came with the policy, it still is not a good idea.

One of the things that came with the one-child policy