One-child Policy - Effects On Population Growth and Fertility Rate

Effects On Population Growth and Fertility Rate

After the introduction of the one-child policy, the fertility rate in China fell from 2.63 births per woman in 1980 (already a sharp reduction from more than five births per woman in the early 1970s) to 1.61 in 2009. However, the policy itself is probably only partially responsible for the reduction in the total fertility rate.

The Chinese government make the claim that it had three to four hundred million fewer people in 2008 with the one-child policy, than it would have had otherwise. Chinese authorities thus consider the policy as a great success in helping to implement China's current economic growth. The reduction in the fertility rate and thus population growth has reduced the severity of problems that come with overpopulation, like epidemics, slums, overwhelmed social services (such as health, education, law enforcement), and strain on the ecosystem from abuse of fertile land and production of high volumes of waste. Even with the one-child policy in place, China still has one million more births than deaths every five weeks.

Read more about this topic:  One-child Policy

Famous quotes containing the words effects, population, growth, fertility and/or rate:

    Consider what effects which might conceivably have practical bearings we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.
    Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)

    The paid wealth which hundreds in the community acquire in trade, or by the incessant expansions of our population and arts, enchants the eyes of all the rest; the luck of one is the hope of thousands, and the bribe acts like the neighborhood of a gold mine to impoverish the farm, the school, the church, the house, and the very body and feature of man.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    This [new] period of parenting is an intense one. Never will we know such responsibility, such productive and hard work, such potential for isolation in the caretaking role and such intimacy and close involvement in the growth and development of another human being.
    —Joan Sheingold Ditzion and Dennie Palmer (20th century)

    I will go root away
    The noisome weeds which without profit suck
    The soil’s fertility from wholesome flowers.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    If I die prematurely at any rate I shall be saved from being bored to death at my own success.
    Samuel Butler (1835–1902)