How China might look if the one-child policy were strictly enforced



SINCE 1979 China has undertaken a bold demographic experiment to reduce its population growth, placing a limit on the number of children many couples can have: one. The government claims the policy has shrunk the number of births by around 400m. The “one-child policy” is not, however, as simple as it sounds. The restrictions are enforced more strictly in the cities than elsewhere, with exemptions for minority ethnic groups and some rural families. A strict one-child policy, applied without exceptions countrywide, would have made an even bigger dent in China's population. To show this, The Economist has estimated the impact of a hypothetical one-child policy imposed without exceptions, on everyone, everywhere in China. The results are compared with the UN Population Division's central scenario for the country, which reflects the existing one-child policy. If each woman had been allowed only one child since 1980, China's population would have been 340m smaller than it was in 2010. If a strict one-child limit were in force for the rest of this century China's population would shrink to less than 145m by 2100, 800m fewer than the UN projects in its central scenario. By then China would have 1.2 pensioners per worker, although it would also have relatively few children to look after: just one for every 9.2 workers.