China drops one-child policy

The Chinese government has announced it will abandon its controversial one-child policy.

According to a brief statement from the ruling Communist Party reported by the state-run Xinhua News Agency, Chinese couples will now be allowed to have two children.

The one-child policy, under which Chinese couples who had more than one child could face penalties or compulsory abortions, was first introduced in 1979 to reduce the rate at which the country’s population was growing.

In common with other major economies, China now faces a shortage of workers in coming years, with the fertility rate now at 1.7 births per woman according to the most recent World Bank figures.

The policy was relaxed in 2013, when it was announced that families could have more than one child if either the mother or father had no siblings themselves.

Elizabeth Brainerd has written about the effectiveness of government policies to reverse undesirable declines in fertility for IZA World of Labor, arguing that: “For policymakers trying to stem the population loss and the changes in population age structure resulting from declining fertility, the most effective approach is likely to combine well-crafted pronatalist policies with openness to increased immigration.”

Haoming Liu has also written for us about the impact of fertility rates on quality of education. He writes that: “Policies aimed at reducing fertility will likely increase parents’ education spending per child, particularly in developing countries that need to curb rapid population growth rates. However, while policies that encourage couples to have fewer children could stimulate parental investment in children’s health and education, empirical studies find that the impact is likely to be small.”

Read more on this story at the Wall Street Journal and BBC News.

Related articles:
Can government policies reverse undesirable declines in fertility? by Elizabeth Brainerd
The quantity–quality fertility–education trade-off by Haoming Liu

Find more IZA World of Labor articles about demography, family, and gender