Telling people how many babies they can have is probably the ultimate in political, social, economic, and family planning. That is what China did, a dictatorial policy it is now trying to reverse.
Adopted in 1980, the one-child policy was sometimes enforced by heavy fines for couples who violated it, sometimes by dismissing them from their jobs, sometimes by forced sterilizations, and sometimes by forcing women to have abortions, especially of female children. Some parents, fearing punishment for non-compliance, resorted to infanticide. Baby girls were sometimes abandoned. Tens of thousands of bureaucrats were employed to enforce the policy.
It has been apparent for some time that China, thanks to its one-child policy, which favoured male children, was running out of mothers and therefore of babies and potential workers. According to The Economist, China now has at least 30 million more men than women. That magazine also warned many years ago that China, unlike many Western countries, was likely to become old before it got rich.
Lower birth rates and rising life expectancy mean that the productive and tax-paying workforce shrinks in relation to the older population, with major consequences for the financing of social security.
According to The Wall Street Journal, China’s recent national census showed that the number of births dropped from almost 18 million in 2016 to 12 million last year. The working-age population (people between the ages of 15 and 59) dropped from 70% of the total in 2010 to 63% last year. The proportion of the total population accounted for by people over the age of 60 rose from 13% in 2010 to almost 19% last year.
In other words, more and more non-working older people are dependent for their well-being on the taxes paid by fewer and fewer younger working people.