One-child policy, official program initiated in the late 1970s and early ’80s by the central government of China, the purpose of which was to limit the great majority of family units in the country to one child each. The rationale for implementing the policy was to reduce the growth rate of China’s enormous population. It was announced in late 2015 that the program was to end in early 2016. The influence of these community-level differences strengthens over time. It is especially one child policy in india large in the Southeast, where sex ratios have typically been more balanced, and could reflect a cultural shift in that region. In the Northwest, these findings reflect recently documented improvements in some of the most gender-skewed states.
However, concerns over an ageing population are not limited to the Southern states. On December 1, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat expressed concern over the decline in population growth, stating that India’s TFR should be at least 3, which is significantly higher than the replacement rate of 2.1 per cent. Andhra Pradesh, while scrapping the policy, also cited concerns about low fertility rates and an ageing population.
implementation
I hypothesize that social norms affect these factors, such that some communities will see higher rates of sex selection and others lower. Communities are defined as villages or, in the case of larger cities, urban neighborhoods. While these differences are difficult to measure explicitly, mixed-effects modeling allows one to control for them anyways. I estimate these community effects on how likely parents are to sex select when they already have daughters. All else equal, the likelihood that parents will sex select depends on the children they have already and how many they are willing to have. For example, among parents who want three children, those with two daughters will be most likely to sex select during the third pregnancy.
While the government has encouraged “high quality” urban women to give birth, rural and minority women are still discouraged from having more children. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, infant mortality dropped significantly. The “one-child policy” – limiting births per couple through coercive measures – was implemented in the early 1980s, and fertility dropped dramatically. The irony is that India’s birth rate and the size of families are decreasing because of women’s own reproductive choices.
- Leaders of different political parties have expressed concerns in recent times that the southern states are set to lose a number of Lok Sabha seats in the upcoming delimitation exercise.
- Poonam Muttreja, executive director of the Population Foundation of India, celebrated the survey results as proof of the power of persuasion over more direct interventions such as China’s notorious one-child policy.
- It was also around 1970 that the concept of sex-selective abortion was introduced in India.
- India will surpass China as the country with the world’s largest population in 2023, according to the United Nations World Population Prospects 2022 report.
- After the one-child policy ended in 2016, China’s birth and fertility rates remained low, leaving the country with a population that was aging rapidly and a workforce that was shrinking.
Treating the Northwest and especially the Southeast as homogeneous blocks regarding son preference is increasingly inappropriate. In China, families were desperate to ensure that the one child they were legally allowed to have should be a boy. And they got rid of their unwanted infant daughters in most cruel ways. By the time the time the rule was amended to a “two-child policy” in 2015, irreparable damage had been done. It was almost as if girls had been purged from the population in those 35 years.
KP Singh on urban planning, his success mantra, life lessons and more
The state’s Information and Public Relations Minister, K Parthasarathy, said that Andhra’s Total Fertility Rate (TFR) was abysmally low. The right-wing government in India’s most populous state has proposed a controversial legislation aimed at curbing its population growth, with experts calling the move “coercive” and fearing it may lead to increased gender inequality. It was also around 1970 that the concept of sex-selective abortion was introduced in India. Clinics encouraged parents to “get rid of unwanted daughters” and focus on having only sons. Meanwhile, in pockets of rural India female infants were being killed by their own families in a gruesome manner till the mid-1990s.
Get CNN Health’s weekly newsletter
As happened at the height of China’s one-child policy, Indians could lose government jobs and more if such laws were passed at the national level. After the one-child policy ended in 2016, China’s birth and fertility rates remained low, leaving the country with a population that was aging rapidly and a workforce that was shrinking. With data from China’s 2020 census highlighting an impending demographic and economic crisis, the Chinese government announced in 2021 that married couples would be allowed to have as many as three children.
If the policy is implemented, it can readily control the fertility rates and suppress the aggravated problem of overpopulation. In China, the government found that once fertility rates dropped, they were faced with an ageing population. Even after relaxing birth control policies to allow all couples to have two children in 2015, and three children in 2021, birth rates remain low, particularly among the urban middle class favoured by the government.
