I spent some time researching this topic recently (blog post link). It seemed an odd paradox—why does the one-child policy not seem to have that much of an impact on the birth rates?
The answer is quite simple but weird that no-one knows about it. It’s mainly that the pre-One Child Policy population control policies in China in the 1970s were more restrictive than you think, and the 1980s policies were de facto more liberal. You can see this 1970s crash on any visualisation- from 6 to 2.7 births per women in 7 years! (1970-1977). A big chunk of this was because the legal marriage age shot up in most areas, to 25⁄23 for rural women/men, and 28⁄25 for urban. You get a big gap where people, especially in villages, would previously be having kids at 18 and suddenly weren’t.
Thanks to Deng’s reforms, the 1980s were more open in many ways, marriage was restored to the normal age, divorce was liberalised, so the one child policy was implemented partly to stop a resurgence of the birth rate! So alongside a big wave of sterilisations, you also get the “catch-up” of people now allowed to marry and have kids. Also, after some pushback, the OCP wasn’t that strictly enforced in the late 1980s, especially in rural areas, so you get some provinces where 3 or 4 kids stayed normal. Some people also took advantage of Deng’s reforms to leave their village, get divorced and have a kid with someone else. So you don’t see a big crash in the birth rate in the 1980s, and China averaged 2.5 kids per woman in the mid 1980s.
The OCP was more strictly enforced in the 1990s, so you see the crash from 2.5 to 1.5 births per women then. You also start seeing the extreme sex ratio imbalances. Now that the 1990s (56% male) cohort has reached parent-age, that’s one reason the current crash in the birth rate is so extreme. China would probably be seeing drops in the birth rate in the absence of any population control policies, but there’s no chance it would be this extreme.
I spent some time researching this topic recently (blog post link). It seemed an odd paradox—why does the one-child policy not seem to have that much of an impact on the birth rates?
The answer is quite simple but weird that no-one knows about it. It’s mainly that the pre-One Child Policy population control policies in China in the 1970s were more restrictive than you think, and the 1980s policies were de facto more liberal. You can see this 1970s crash on any visualisation- from 6 to 2.7 births per women in 7 years! (1970-1977). A big chunk of this was because the legal marriage age shot up in most areas, to 25⁄23 for rural women/men, and 28⁄25 for urban. You get a big gap where people, especially in villages, would previously be having kids at 18 and suddenly weren’t.
Thanks to Deng’s reforms, the 1980s were more open in many ways, marriage was restored to the normal age, divorce was liberalised, so the one child policy was implemented partly to stop a resurgence of the birth rate! So alongside a big wave of sterilisations, you also get the “catch-up” of people now allowed to marry and have kids. Also, after some pushback, the OCP wasn’t that strictly enforced in the late 1980s, especially in rural areas, so you get some provinces where 3 or 4 kids stayed normal. Some people also took advantage of Deng’s reforms to leave their village, get divorced and have a kid with someone else. So you don’t see a big crash in the birth rate in the 1980s, and China averaged 2.5 kids per woman in the mid 1980s.
The OCP was more strictly enforced in the 1990s, so you see the crash from 2.5 to 1.5 births per women then. You also start seeing the extreme sex ratio imbalances. Now that the 1990s (56% male) cohort has reached parent-age, that’s one reason the current crash in the birth rate is so extreme. China would probably be seeing drops in the birth rate in the absence of any population control policies, but there’s no chance it would be this extreme.
Thanks for explaining, that makes sense and is very interesting!