Case Study China – One Child

Policy

AS Geography - 2014

Causes of the Increasing Population…

• Around the world and for China, food production was helping with rapid population growth as It has

increased by 24%, outpacing the rate of the populations growth

• In China it was traditional for parents to have children to require their children to support them

through the aging times. Therefore the more children they were having the more support that they are

gaining as parents get older, however only sons can provide the retirement plans for their parents.

• China had no birth control, they were just having more children which was leading to the increasing population. On the other hand, in the 1960s the

Chinese population was about 700 million and still rapidly growing. The idea of parents having more

children links in with the Chinese tradition of support• Things were needing to be done… So the One Child

Policy was introduced!!

Figure 1 - China’s population growth on the Population Pyramid which we can see shows high population.

We can see it has high birth rates then death rates…

One Child PolicyPolicy – “Carrot and Stick”

“Carrot” - The incentives that were given to the people during the one child policy was

things like:

Health care, access to housing, education for children and young adults and would gain

taxes and people with at least two children would be able to gain adoption or fostering

options that were open to them.

“Stick” – Some people in China during the Policy has some consequences such as, being made to have

abortions when you didn’t want to. – THEY WERE FORCED!! People with more then one child wouldn’t be able to have benefits to support for themselves.

The policy was keenly resisted in rural areas, where it was traditional to have large families People were made to decide on Gender if they couldn't decide on what they wanted they

would have to choose between a male or a female… However, As a result, the gender balance of the Chinese population has become distorted.

Today it is thought that men outnumber women by more than 60 million. They were wanting to DECREASE the population growth so this Policy was created…

Consequences – Positives and Negatives…

• Those who had more than one child didn't receive these benefits and were fined.

• The policy was keenly resisted in rural areas, where it was traditional to have

large families.• In urban areas, the policy has been enforced strictly but remote rural areas

have been harder to control.• Many people claim that some women,

who became pregnant after they had already had a child, were forced to have

an abortion and many women were forcibly sterilized. There appears to be

evidence to back up these claims.

Positives Negatives • The positives that there were in the One child

policy was that people were given education, benefits and more better ways of living.

• The One child policy may have brought many negative emotions and policies but positives

were made for those people who were having only one child and the government was

helping them out with these things that have been stated above: like better education,

housing and benefits for the families making China a better place and many good things happening to those people who were not

getting these things before the policy when have more then one child.

The Current Policy…• The one-child policy has been strictly enforced, but has

become unpopular, this means that the One child Policy is decreasing in its strict ways and is calming down more

into the future.• China introduced its one-child policy at the end of the

1970s to curb rapid population growth.• But correspondents say the policy has become

increasingly unpopular and that leaders fear the country's ageing population will both reduce the labor pool and

exacerbate elderly care issues.• By 2050, more than a quarter of the population will be

over 65.• The one-child policy has on the whole been strictly enforced, though some exceptions already exist, including

for ethnic minorities. • The traditional preference for boys has created a gender

imbalance as some couples opt for sex-selective abortions

Figure 2 – Shows the prediction of China’s population by 2050, this is showing a major difference when the one

child policy was around, showing that it is decreasing and being made better.