China’s one child Policy

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Brief history of the policy

• Introduced by the Chinese government in 1979• Implemented to alleviate social,

economic, and environmental problems in China • Authorities claim that

the policy has prevented 250 million births from when is started in 2000

• Additional children will result in large fines: families violating the policy are required to pay monetary penalties and might be denied bonuses at their workplace

Issues: Dependency Ratio

• Increase in the prevalence of chronic disease and disability in the population because of an ageing population

• There will be soaring health care costs because there will be a lower percentage of the working-age population.

• One child is now expected to provide for their whole family, this being 6 adults.

•The percentage of elderly people in China is projected to triple from 8% to 24%, between 2006 and 2050. •There are also not enough children to support the ageing population

The Problem

What this means for China

Issues: Gender Imbalance

Year 1981 2000

Boys

Girls

Bothsexes

38.7

36.7

37.7

26.5

38.9

32.2

Ratio G/B 0.95 1.46

• China's history has considered men superior to women.

• The government has banned gender selection for new born babies by induced abortion and ultrasounds

• This is problem is greater in rural areas because they want boys to help on farms and with the family

• There is a huge shortage of girls due to this • If the ratio of boys to girls continues to increase,

there will be over 30 million men without wives.

The Problem

• Girl care projects introduced to increase incentive for having girls• Women who give birth to girls and keep them will be rewarded • There will also be benefits for girls such as their school fees being exempt. • Families with daughters only are given preferential treatment with health care, employment and

housing

Solutions

Issues: Little Emperor Syndrome

• Little emperor syndrome is a name for a condition which affects bothparents and their only child. With both parents giving all their attention toone child and spoiling it, the child feels more important. • Editor of a prominent literary journal, Yang Xiaosheng says that China’s children are

growing up as self centred, narrow minded and incapable of accepting criticism.

What is it?

Issues: Little Emperor Syndrome

• Obesity

• Pressure on one child

• Poor social communication

• Problems succeeding

Consequences

Issues: Rural Vs Urban

Rural UrbanPositive Positive

Negative Negative

There is a population difference between Rural and Urban china. As more people are situatedalong the coast of China, this also illustrates the Urban areas, while inland areas are populatedby less people as it is rural and mostly farm land or just uninhabitable. The more populated anarea is the less number of children a family is likely to have, this is for a number of reasons.

• In most rural areas, a couple may have a second child after a break of several years.

• Rural parents may have a second child if the first is a girl."

• The policy had also allowed many children in the countryside to get a better education.

• Rural families want boys due to social pressures and so that they can help with farm work.

• Infanticide (when firstborn=girl) is more likely to occur in rural areas as abortion clinics aren't as available.

• If the farmers have no money to pay fines, family planning team take things from them.

• Easier to have one child due to work being in nearby

• Benefits are worth just having one child • Urban single children, free of sibling

competition

• Women are easier to police when pregnant • 'Family planning' people are permitted to insist

that a mother has an abortion if it is her second child.

• Some couples are forced to get sterilised if they do not commit to the 'promise' of having one child.

Evaluation

• China has managed to lower its birth rate from 6 to 1.8

• This lowers the risks of epidemics, slums, overwhelmed social services and strain on the ecosystem

• Where education is concerned both rural and urban areas benefit

• Children are getting more attention and don’t have to deal with sibling competition.

• In rural area’s baby girls are being killed as boys are seen as more desirable

• Couples who are having a second child are forced to abort and get sterilized

• The birth rate is rapidly decreasing but life expectancy is increasing

• This will lead to an extremely high ageing population

• There will not be enough economically active to support them

• One child has to support their whole family

• There is very little funding to aid the ageing population

Benefits

Problems

What does the future hold for the one child policy

• In 30 years, China’s population will reach a peak of 1.5 billion and then start to shrink

• By this time, 20% of China’s population will be over 65 compared to the 7% now

• "The increase of labour force supply will stop by 2013 and will start instead to decline"

• It is believed by 2020, there will be around 40 million Chinese men incapable to marry, since too few girls will have been born

• This may lead to trafficking and kidnapping of women

• in these next 50 years it is predicted that there will be more old people than young people, which means that the population will start declining.

• The elderly-support ratio—the working-age adult (ages 15 to 64) per number of elderly (age 65 and above)—is projected to decline drastically, from 9 persons to 2.5 persons by 2050.8