one-child policy means that each child has two parents and four grandparents to care for exclusively, so that's not going to work out so well
Some on-the-ground experience with China would indicate that the one-child policy has basically no effect on the number of children per couple. As would the international fertility stats.
Most recently, I asked a group of chinese software developers about the policy. They went around the table admitting they weren't only children.
My experience is the exact opposite. My wife and her brother are the only set of siblings among their cousins (of which there are money, because their grandparents had a massive quantity of children). The financial repercussions of disobeying the law are fairly severe, so people don't generally bypass it.
I wonder what the explanation could be for our radically different experiences. Mine is all around Beijing, is yours perhaps out somewhere less urbanized?
I wouldn't say that. My experience is all Shanghai.
Potentially it's an SES thing, but note that the fertility statistics show very low fertility for China, so a lot of only children isn't unusual overall. The conclusion that the one-child policy isn't having any effect comes from the fact that Japan and Korea have the same ultra-low fertility rate, but no one-child policy.
Japan and Korea seem like bad comparisons, since they're relatively rich. It's fairly well known (read: I don't feel like looking it up right now) that there's a strong negative correlation between wealth and birth rates. But I don't know what the right comparison would be (China is kind of incomparable) nor what the answer would be.
Perhaps the best comparison would be India, and the disparity in birth rates there is stark, but there are massive other differences as well.
Comments
Some on-the-ground experience with China would indicate that the one-child policy has basically no effect on the number of children per couple. As would the international fertility stats.
Most recently, I asked a group of chinese software developers about the policy. They went around the table admitting they weren't only children.
My experience is the exact opposite. My wife and her brother are the only set of siblings among their cousins (of which there are money, because their grandparents had a massive quantity of children). The financial repercussions of disobeying the law are fairly severe, so people don't generally bypass it.
I wonder what the explanation could be for our radically different experiences. Mine is all around Beijing, is yours perhaps out somewhere less urbanized?
I wouldn't say that. My experience is all Shanghai.
Potentially it's an SES thing, but note that the fertility statistics show very low fertility for China, so a lot of only children isn't unusual overall. The conclusion that the one-child policy isn't having any effect comes from the fact that Japan and Korea have the same ultra-low fertility rate, but no one-child policy.
Japan and Korea seem like bad comparisons, since they're relatively rich. It's fairly well known (read: I don't feel like looking it up right now) that there's a strong negative correlation between wealth and birth rates. But I don't know what the right comparison would be (China is kind of incomparable) nor what the answer would be.
Perhaps the best comparison would be India, and the disparity in birth rates there is stark, but there are massive other differences as well.