Today China’s population is approaching 1.4 billion. If the government hadn’t instituted its one child per family policy, what would the current population be?
This blog post estimates that about 400 million pregnancies have been terminated as a result of the policy. Keep in mind, however, the organization behind this website is strongly in favor of population growth.
I’m no demographer but I suppose that means there’s be those additional 400 million people living in China today, plus any children born to them.
Minus those who would have died from any cause. I don’t know what the mortality rate would be, but it would be a factor.
I meant, there would be those additional 400 million, plus any children they might have had by this time, all added to the 1.4B Chinese now.
I thought of that, but couldn’t begin to guess what it might be. Overall, I think it would be a fairly small number out of the total estimate, keeping in mind that mortality is already factored into the estimated actual population of >1.3B.
My guesstimate would be slightly over 2 billion right now.
In the post war years (1950-60s) China had ~1.5x India’s population.
By 1990 the difference was 1.3x, by 2010 1.1x.
If you assume this drop is due to the policy, then the current population of China would be around 1.8 billion.
A paper by the director of Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy argued that the policy averted 200 million births between its institution in 1979 and 2009.
The best way to estimate it, I suppose, would be to look at the population growth of ethnic minorities (who are not subject to the policy) and extrapolate that to similar Han populations.
The population expanded a lot under Mao and the cultural revolution. It’s understandable; not only were large families encouraged, but there just wasn’t that much else to do back then.
My understanding is that it’s not an enormous number. The one-child policy is more of a tool for political control and posturing than a coherent population policy.
The policy is not universal-- in 2007 only 35% of the population was subject to it-- and even then it is inconsistently enforced. Successful urbanites with party ties are the most likely to be affected, but that demographic has always had fairly low birth rates. Like every middle income country, China is transitioning from the idea of children as awesome free farm labor that largely takes care of itself to children as expensive luxuries that cost a small fortune and require an enormous time investment, and birth rates would likely drop naturally.
In rural areas, many people are except and those that are not except are often able to flout the rules, especially if the local officials are on good terms with them. Where the policy really comes in to play is when a local official has it out for someone and wants another card to play. It’s kind of a horrific version of “no loitering” laws. Most of the time you can loiter all you want, but if someone in charge decides they don’t like your face, they can use it to harass you and drive you out.
The main problem in estimating is that the birthrate in China dropped at the same time the birthrates in a lot of nearby countries dropped as well. So it’s hard to say how much of a difference the one-child policy actually made, versus other cultural and economic changes.
I suspect falling birthrates have more to do with economic improvements and availability of birthcontrol, as happened in other regions. But there isn’t really any convincing way to tell.
Are there any statistics on the median age in China?
Cause and effect is hard to prove here. See, even IF restrictions on children were lifted, it’s not at all clear to me that the Chinese birth rate would skyrocket.
Birth rates are extremely low in most neighboring Asian countries. There are no restrictions on the number of babies couples in Japan or South Korea can have, but birth rates and marriage rates in those countries keep falling. There are millions of young Asian women no longer find marriage or motherhood very appealing- and I’m inclined to believe young Chinese women increasingly feel the same way.