Chinese Think-Tank Calls For End To One-Child Policy
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China’s government must adjust its one-child policy “as soon as possible” so as to deal with an aging population and a possible labour shortage, said a group of researchers from the State Council’s Development Research Centre (DRC) on Tuesday in an essay published on the China Economic Times.
China’s government must adjust its one-child policy “as soon as possible” so as to deal with an aging population and a possible labour shortage, said a group of researchers from the State Council’s Development Research Centre (DRC) on Tuesday in an essay published on the China Economic Times.
“An opening up of the two-child option to all should be considered,” the researchers wrote, noting that birth rates in big cities like Shanghai and Beijing had fallen below one child for every woman of child-bearing age.
In addition, the researchers said that the situation would only worsen as the nation pushes ahead with urbanization and industrialization.
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[quote]”The longer we wait, the more vulnerable we will be,” the researchers said.[/quote]According to the National Bureau of Statistics, China’s labour force declined from 74.5 percent in 2010 to 74.4 percent last year, marking the first decline since 2002. The elderly population on the other has increased by 2.9 percentage points over the last ten years, while China’s fertility rate is now well below the replacement level of 2.1 – at 1.6 children per woman.
Meanwhile, people under the age of 14—the country’s future workers—made up just 16.6 percent of China’s population, compared with 23 percent a decade earlier.
Accordingly, while China’s leaders have credited the one-child policy with preventing a population explosion of about 400 million births since it was enacted in 1980, the policy today is threatening to create a vastly over-aged population, which could hurt the nation’s economic growth.
Increasing the fertility rate to 2.3 children per woman, from about 1.6, would cut the decline in the workforce in half by 2050 to 8.8 percent, from 17.3 percent, said the United Nations.
But some scholars have warned that even the loosening of the one-child rule, would not “have any effect.”
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[quote]”Population policy isn’t as easy to change as economic policy,” said He Yafu, an independent-population expert, to the Wall Street Journal.[/quote]Family planning is a “fundamental national policy,” added He, who noted that any changes to the policy was unlikely to happen until after a once-in-a-decade leadership change scheduled to be completed next spring.
