China on Thursday announced that it is abolishing the one-child policy, enabling all couples to have two children. The move takes aim at China’s looming demographic crunch, brought about by a rapidly aging society and a shrinking working-age population. Here are five things to know about the policy.

29 Oct 2015 7:17am
By
Laurie Burkitt
1 Why was the one-child policy enacted?

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China’s leaders implemented the one-child policy in 1980, intending to rein in explosive population growth and help raise living standards. The policy has largely achieved those goals, experts say. But it has led to a host of problems, including abortions and sterilization forced upon women by officials to meet population targets and tiny nuclear families that placed the burden of elderly care on single children.

2 Has it ever been changed?

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China effectively sidelined the one-child policy two years ago, when it loosened the rules so that couples could have two children if one parent came from a single-child household – as most did more than three decades after the policy was enacted. Still, Thursday move is symbolically significant and an acknowledgement of the problems the one-child policy has caused.

3 Why is China dropping the one-child policy now?

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China’s working-age population–those aged 15 to 64–is drastically shrinking. The United Nations projects that China will lose 67 million workers from 2010 to 2030. At the same time, China’s elderly population is expected to soar from 110 million in 2010 to 210 million in 2030, and by 2050 will account for a quarter of the population, according to the U.N. China’s population, the world’s largest, rose to 1.34 billion in 2010, according to census data.

4 What kind of impact will the move have?

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It isn’t clear. The last easing resulted in 1.45 million new birth applications, according to China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission. The number was far lower than experts expected, said Cai Yong, an expert in China’s demography at the University of North Carolina. Even rural residents, many of which have been exempt of the one-child policy, are reluctant to have bigger families, largely because of the costs associated with having more than one child.

5 Does it come too late?

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Some demographers and economists say that a new two-child policy will do too little to change China’s economic course and comes too late to solve a looming labor crisis. People are marrying later—some not at all—and many are opting to have fewer or no children as the cost of living climbs. Fertility rates are roughly 1.5 children per woman and won’t likely increase, as more Chinese delay marriage and childbirth, Mr. Cai said.

We need dat policy in 9ja

Nigeria 12 children policy... Na Garri de help Us

Lol..na govt go help me feed my children?why dictate the number of children i'm going to have.

G

These Are Countries That Make Policies And Enforce Them. So Sad Nigeria Can't Even Bring Themselve To Making Their Own Policies Na Only To Dey Copy Copy Oyibo Pipul

Our policy in Nija should be 2-3 only. The earlier the better before it gets out of hand.