One child policy questions
1) The Great Chinese Famine 2) The rapid reduction in birth rates during 1970s caused by strict gov't birth control policies
Which two episodes in Chinese history have contributed to the decline in China's share in the world population?
Households that had been postponing births or had lost family members during the famine years had an unusually large number of births as conditions improved. This led to China's birth rates peaking in 1963.
China's birth rates peaked in 1963. According to Naughton, this peak reflects the phenomenon of "replacement births." Explain.
-Urban fertility rates have shown sharp decline and are low, - Rural fertility rates have been much higher.
Describe the gap in fertility rates between rural and urban China
- Calculate age-specific birth rate for women in a given year, - Aggregate these age-specific birth rates to form a total birth rate of a representative woman - as if she were passing through the successive years of her life according to the average pattern of all women in that year
How is TFR calculated?
- Although birth rates are high, death rates are also high. - Birth rates are high because each adult woman has many children to compensate for high IMR - The death rates are high, especially in periods of poor harvests, higher diseases, and civil wars
Explain why, in pre-modern societies(in the first phase of demographic transition), the population growth is slow
Until the creation of PRC in 1949
How long did China's pre-modern demographic pattern exist?
1. Access to birth control technology also improves with economic development. 2. Social changes associated with modernization lead to preference for smaller families 3. As families move to cities and as women enter the paid labor force, the opportunity cost of the mother's time spent in child rearing becomes greater. 4. Families leaving agriculture have less use for more children for child labor. 5. Increasing levels of education, both for the mother and children, also contribute to declining birth rates. (As costs of supporting children through the end of the educational process are high, families often opt for fewer but better educated children, leading to a quality-quantity trade-off.)
"Birth rates begin to decline gradually in nearly all populations we observe [after the phase of population explosion]. " Explain why, discussing two factors that contribute to declining birth rates. (5)
Policy in 35 years of its existence has created tens of millions of one-child families today. For these families, the harm caused is bad. - Burden for society that has to support elderly - Burden for working age only children who have to support parents - 3 decades of Overwhelmingly male sex ratios - Terminated many kin ties, cultural significance - unclear why, and why so long
"China's one-child policy will be remembered as one of the costliest lessons of misguided public policymaking." What, according to Wang, Gu and Cai were the costs associated with the one- child policy?
- In 1983, the policy called for mandatory insertion of intra-uterine devices (IUDs) for women with one child, sterilization for couples with two or more children, and abortion of unauthorized conceptions. - By 1984, domestic resistance and international controversy led the Chinese government to a substantial relaxation of the policy, which could be more aptly described as a "One-and-a-Half-Child Policy" after 1984 - The government officially renounced forced sterilization and forced abortion; and relaxed rules regarding rural couples having more than one child if the first one was a daughter.
"The implementation of the one child policy was extraordinarily strict through the first five years." Give examples to discuss why this was so.
- many households consider boys culturally and materially more valuable. - This son-preference, combined with the government-enforced birth limitation in China, have resulted in an extremely unbalanced sex ratio in China, - In the 2000 census, More than 12 million girls were "missing"
"The most important side effects of the "One-Child Policy" derive from the Chinese preference for sons". Explain this statement, discussing the sex ratio imbalance of China's population.
Urban China displays: 1. High female labor force participation 2. High female educational attainment 3. High educational aspiration for children 4. Good access to health and contraceptive services 5. Relatively good social security system. - None of these factors are prevalent in rural China. 6. Also, in rural China, children contribute to agricultural household income from a young age, and so rural households have higher target family sizes.
"There is a big gap in fertility rates between rural and urban China." Discuss two reasons for this difference in fertility rates.
- According to Naughton, the most important factor is the availability of sex-selective abortion using ultrasound technology to determine the gender of the fetus in utero. - NOT infanticide. - UNDERREPORTING: families choose not to report births or delay reporting given the penalties incurred for unauthorized births. - especially in rural areas were monitoring is more difficult. - Underreporting accounts for 1/3 of the missing girls. - Under the pressure to limit the total number of births per family, many Chinese families prioritize male births - In China, the mortality rates for girls are also higher than for boys, which is atypical, and can be attributed to neglect of girls compared to boys.
According to Naughton, which main factors have caused the "missing girls" in China?
average fertility of all the women in the population at that age during the reference year.
TFR expresses the number of children a woman would have during the course of her life if her fertility in each year of her life were equal to the....
- Even with the reduced fertility rates under the wan-xi-shao policy, population growth was set to accelerate in China with China's "baby-boomers" (generation born following GLF) - China's leaders worried that continued population growth would outstrip nation's population carrying capacity and obstruct economic development. - So, policy tightened and in September 1980 the government formally adopted the "One-Child Policy" and a target population of 1.2 billion was set for the year 2000.
The wan-xi-shao policy reduced fertility rates in China considerably. In spite of that, the population policy was tightened further with the formal adoption of the "one-child policy" in China. What was the motivation behind tightening China's population policy further?
- CBR: age structure of population - TFR: timings of births.
What are crude birth rates sensitive to? What is TFR sensitive to?
1) High birth rate, high death rate 2) High birth rate, low death rate (considerable population growth) 3) Low birth rate, low death rate (population growth lowers)
What are the 3 phases of Demographic transition?
- TFR are not affected by the age structure of the population - Crude birth rates are sensitive to the age composition of the population - for example, the birth rate will be temporary higher when there is a larger proportion of women at childbearing ages.
What is the advantage of using TFR over the crude birth rate as a measure of reproductive rate? (give example)
The crude birth rate expresses the number of births as a percent of the total population
What is the crude birth rate?
- The dependency rate shows the dependent population (the sum of children and seniors) expressed as a percentage of the working age population (ages 15-64). - Between 2005 and 2015, China's baby boomers were mainly in the workforce. - Implementation of One child policy caused trough in dependency rate because amount of children were lower, amount of those working were higher. - But now as the baby-boomers are set to retire & the workforce shrinks an aging population will cause severe strains on China's social system. - Furthermore, rural elderly are not covered by pension plans, and China struggles with funding pensions. - Substantial imbalance between smaller group of taxpayers and larger number of retirees
What is the dependency rate? Explain why China's dependency rates reached a trough between 2005 and 2015. Why is Naughton worried that an aging population (as well as rising senior dependency rates) post 2015 would cause substantial strains on China's social system?
The TFR is a measure of the total number of children a typical woman bears during her lifetime.
What is the total fertility rate (TFR)?
- Legally restricted the number of children per couple to one and provided an array of sanctions and penalties for two or (especially) more than two children. - Exemptions; second child allowed in rural areas if first child is a girl, or hardship factors. Not applied to Non-han ethnic minorities
What was the "One-Child Policy" of China? What were the exemptions?
- First all-out family planning initiative launched by the Chinese government in 1971-78 - "later marriages, longer spacing between children, and fewer children in total". - The legal minimum age of marriage was increased, and couples were urged to wait before having a second or third child. - This policy was directed at both urban and rural couples. - The policy was highly successful in reducing TFR in China.
What was the wan-xi-shao (later-longer-fewer) policy introduced by the Chinese government in 1971?
- Mid-1950s - Improvements in sanitation, water, and pest control - Introduction of vaccination & improved nutrition
When did China begin its period of population explosion (second phase of demographic transition)? Which factors contributed to its population explosion?
- China officially ended the one child policy from January 1, 2016. - The process of ending the one-child policy occurred in three steps over three years. It began in 1) March 2013, when China merged the National Population and Family Planning Commission with the Ministry of Health to create a new National Health and Family Planning 2) November 2013, China announced a partial policy relaxation that allowed couples to have two children if one parent is an only child. 3) October 2015 to allow all couples to have two children in 2016.
When did China officially end the "One-Child Policy"? The policy was phased out in three steps. What were the three steps?
- Water, sanitation, pest control improvements - Disease control - Vaccination introduction - Nutrition improvements - Equal distribution of food - Preventive healthcare
Which factors contributed to China's population growth?