Possible Alternative to China's 1-Child Policy? (wages, generations, Baby Boomers, independent)

[ragnarkar]

The government in China is considering abolishing the one child policy but supposed it's still deemed unrealistic to get rid of it at this time. Would this alternative work:

If a son is born, whether it's your 1st or 10th child, you cannot have any more children.

If a daughter is born, you can keep having daughters until a son is born.

Hopefully this would put a cap on population growth AND help offset some of the gender imbalance already in place. Would this work out in practice (barring any politics)?

[Mattos_12]

Originally Posted by ragnarkar

The government in China is considering abolishing the one child policy but supposed it's still deemed unrealistic to get rid of it at this time. Would this alternative work:

If a son is born, whether it's your 1st or 10th child, you cannot have any more children.

If a daughter is born, you can keep having daughters until a son is born.

Hopefully this would put a cap on population growth AND help offset some of the gender imbalance already in place. Would this work out in practice (barring any politics)?

They have a policy which is a akin to that currently.

But education has proven useful in reducing birthrates, perhaps they could just invest in that.

[peppermint]

I agree, Mattos. There is a correlation between increased education and decreased fertility (Figure III on page 21 of the UN's Population, Education and Development: The Concise Report), 2003.

page 22:

Female education was also found to be associated with fertility preferences, adolescent fertility and contraceptive use, with better-educated women desiring smaller family sizes, having lower percentages of pregnant women or mothers among their adolescent population, and having a higher percentage of women using contraception among their married population.

I believe the key to decreasing populations is the education of women. Not only does that give the potential mother more power, more options, more control; but as communities and cities become more education, they begin to value their females as much as their males. They are seeing this in parts of India (documentary World in Balance, 2004).

[purehuman]

All the girl babies will grow up, marry, and have a child!!

[eevee]

why this intense emphasis on having male children? I know many cultures covet them over females, but it seems almost archaic. it instills this idea into girls' head that they somehow aren't good enough because they're female and their parents will keep having kids in hope of the coveted male child. what happens if a family can only realistically care for two children and their first two children are girls? do they dump a girl and try for a boy? this is why so many Chinese girls were surrendered. education is the key, but so is updating cultural ideology and placing a greater worth on females. there are cultures where, due to the cost of providing a dowry, girls are expensive to have and undesirable. ideas like this need to be changed

I think in the long run, even a policy like this will lead to gender imbalance, either too few girls (b/c families were hitting the "jackpot" on their first try and ended up w/ sons) or too many girls.

[VBeachRon]

What's the problem with 1 kid !

There's over 6 billion of us maybe that will due for now

Might even be easier to feed people if there was'nt quite as many of us

Just saying !

[Purple_Princess]

There is enough food for everyone now. As long as you have gree and selfishness there will always be poverty.

There is a higher rate of infanticide when a male child is desired and resources or options for number of offspring are limited. I have read that women in china drown newborn girls so that they may try for a son.

[GregW]

Bringing this thread back to complement one on Politics.

The single most effective family size control measure is an old age support system independent on family size or surviving sons. This is composed of a decent infant and child medical system and a wide spread pension/Social Security systems. Given some reasonable chance that somebody will be around to take care of them when they get old most people will choose smaller families.

The reason for controlling family size is simple: Exponential growth of both population and economic activity is impossible. Eventually either approaches infinity more and more rapidly and all collapse as some vital element become unavailable at any price.

Quoting myself from Politics:

Exponential growth of populations and economies is, at some level, completely unsustainable. Eventually some critical resource is no longer available and the population dies back to way below the sustainable level.

What is "better" a huge population of starving illiterates fighting over the few scraps of arable land and drinkable water available or a lower stable population living at the same economic level as 1970's US on a worldwide basis. I see this as the extremes of possible futures. My own preference is for the latter “steady state” population and economy.

Our country had the choice of a slower population growth in the 1970 to 1990 decades. The post baby boomers had already started to have fewer children and the earliest of the boomers started to die off. Our population would have stabilized over the next few decades. The economic result could have been created as economic growth was distributed downward as fewer young people were available to take the lousy jobs. Their very scarcity would have required higher wages to entice fewer people to do the work.

Unfortunately for most of us the restrictions on immigration were effectively eliminated and our population soared to its current levels. The influx of cheap labor on the farm field to IT programming level kept wages low and stopped the redistribution of wealth to the workers from the investors. Actually the misdistribution of wealth has been exaggerated. As well as providing cheap enough labor to avoid the mechanization of these tasks the immigrants are continuing to have excess children because they do not have any pension system in place. The result is poverty for more and more people in this country without any diminution of poverty in the countries supplying the immigrants.

I believe it will take another couple of generations for the US to approach a steady state population but only if it can avoid the world wide population collapse that is likely in the next 50 years or so. As I said at the beginning of this essay, exponential growth is NOT sustainable forever.

[Mathguy]

Originally Posted by GregW

Bringing this thread back to complement one on Politics.

The single most effective family size control measure is an old age support system independent on family size or surviving sons. This is composed of a decent infant and child medical system and a wide spread pension/Social Security systems. Given some reasonable chance that somebody will be around to take care of them when they get old most people will choose smaller families.

The reason for controlling family size is simple: Exponential growth of both population and economic activity is impossible. Eventually either approaches infinity more and more rapidly and all collapse as some vital element become unavailable at any price.

Quoting myself from Politics:

Exponential growth of populations and economies is, at some level, completely unsustainable. Eventually some critical resource is no longer available and the population dies back to way below the sustainable level.

What is "better" a huge population of starving illiterates fighting over the few scraps of arable land and drinkable water available or a lower stable population living at the same economic level as 1970's US on a worldwide basis. I see this as the extremes of possible futures. My own preference is for the latter “steady state” population and economy.

Our country had the choice of a slower population growth in the 1970 to 1990 decades. The post baby boomers had already started to have fewer children and the earliest of the boomers started to die off. Our population would have stabilized over the next few decades. The economic result could have been created as economic growth was distributed downward as fewer young people were available to take the lousy jobs. Their very scarcity would have required higher wages to entice fewer people to do the work.

Unfortunately for most of us the restrictions on immigration were effectively eliminated and our population soared to its current levels. The influx of cheap labor on the farm field to IT programming level kept wages low and stopped the redistribution of wealth to the workers from the investors. Actually the misdistribution of wealth has been exaggerated. As well as providing cheap enough labor to avoid the mechanization of these tasks the immigrants are continuing to have excess children because they do not have any pension system in place. The result is poverty for more and more people in this country without any diminution of poverty in the countries supplying the immigrants.

I believe it will take another couple of generations for the US to approach a steady state population but only if it can avoid the world wide population collapse that is likely in the next 50 years or so. As I said at the beginning of this essay, exponential growth is NOT sustainable forever.

Excellent post Greg.

One challenge facing China will be increasing mortality due to cancer which may allow for a higher birthrate. Their air quality, water contamination, product contamination\tampering take you back to the "bad old days" of the US pre-FDA etc.

It's pretty bad when your friend visiting from China takes back a suitcase full of powdered milk because he won't give his kids milk sold around where he lives due to known issues.

[suzy_q2010]

Some background on the policy:

MMS: Error

One of the factors that may ultimately fuel change in China's policy is what is being referred to as the 4.2.1 problem: four grandparents and one child being cared for by one couple.

Despite the horror stories of women having their babies killed near term, this does not appear to be official Chinese policy. In general people who insist on having unauthorized children just get punished financially. Selective abortion of girls is also not government policy, but it is done, and the result is an excess of males over females and many Chinese men who have no one to marry. The government is actively trying to counter the "boys are better" mindset.

Many Chinese would prefer to have two children, but there are also couples who are quite happy with one.

What I cannot find is how many couples in China are childless by choice.

Apparently the assisted reproduction business is booming. Some couples even seek out treatment in hopes of skirting the one child rules with a multiple birth.

It will be interesting to see how it plays out when the people who make the rules are themselves only children, products of the policy.

Edited to add:

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/20...5_122990.shtml