5 Things You Need to Know About China’s One- Child Policy

IMG source: yahoo

After 35 years, China has announced that it will abandon its "one-child policy" that limited most urban couples to one child.

The policy prevented an estimated 400 million births since it enactment. China officials have changed the policy to enable couples to have two children.

Here are 5 Things to Know About China’s One-Child Policy


1) Why Was The Policy Introduced

China has the world’s largest population at almost 1.4 billion. 

The one-child policy was introduced to make sure that population growth did not outpace economic development and to reduce environmental and natural resource challenges and imbalances caused by a rapidly expanding population.


It was initially meant to be a temporary measure, but the policy has prevented  an estimated 400 million births and
keeping China's population down to
its current 1.3 billion.

The policy, however, has exceptions, Families where both parents are only children can have an extra child. People in rural areas are also allowed to bear a second child if their first child is a girl or disabled. Ethnic minorities are allowed more children. 

2) The Chinese birth rate is 1.18 children per woman. 

The global average birth rate in developed  countries are 2.5 and 1.7. The one child policy resulted in China falling short of the global average


3) Sex Ratio of About 120 Boys to 100 girls

The policy has led to the surplus of young, unmarried young men. As it encourage a preference for male child.
The widespread of cheap ultrasound, which enables sex determination in mid-pregnancy and easy access to
termination, has led to the widespread abortion.

4) The Policy Was Never Uniformly Implemented

The one-child policy only covers about 35 percent of China. It mostly affect the urban dwellers. The primary idea was to control the growing population.

The  introduction of the one-child policy co-incide with the Deng economic reforms. 

5) What Is Expected Of The New Policy?

The new 'two-child' policy is introduced to help solve the problem of a rapidly growing elderly population.

But the people are marrying later and some prefer to have fewer or no children due to the increasing cost of living.