Unit 2: Population
10/21/16
Original article can be found here
Synopsis:
Recently, China’s one child policy has been changed to two
children in order to increase and even out the population growth.
However, there is a new study that shows it will only bring on a very small
increase. The study recommended that China should increase their retirement age
as well because there will be an expected labor shortage and there won’t
be enough people to fill these jobs. In addition, the one child rule has caused
problems with the sex ratio of boys to girls. Female fetuses were shown
to be selectively aborted in preference of male offspring. This is projected
to lead to China having 30 million more men than women by the end of the
decade. Even with the two child rule it is not enough to fix the problems that
have been created nor is it enough to prevent further ones.
Analysis:
China has recently been having some problems with its
population. At first when they were fearing too much population growth they
created the one child rule. Families with this rule were limited to having only
one child. Although this rule is credited with preventing 400 million extra
births, some experts argue that the total fertility rate (TFR) would
have fallen naturally as China’s education levels grew and their economy developed.
Putting this limit had a lot of unforeseen consequences when China could have
just let it happen naturally. This policy also caused an uneven balance between
men and women in the population. The sex ratio shows that there are a
lot more males than females. Boys seem to be preferred because they are able to
work and provide for the family so there was a significantly larger amount of
abortions with female fetuses. This policy also compelled a lot of women to
have forced abortions or give up their second child for adoption which caused
emotional scarring for everyone involved and overall caused a decrease in the
happiness of the population. These problems still persist and in order to solve
the population issue just the two child policy will not be enough. With
it the population is projected to stay relatively the same at 1.45
billion in 2029. Additionally, I looked at the population pyramid for
China and along with the male side being bigger, I noticed that the dependents
will become the workers and they will not be enough to provide for the elderly.
The dependency ratio will be way off. In addition, another reason why
the two-child policy might not work is because most people have gotten used to only
having one child and won’t want to change their ways so there is no guarantee
that the population will grow. Instead, what is recommended is that the retirement
age gets raised from the low age of 50-55 for women and 60 for men. China
is going to need more people to fill jobs so people need to work longer. Overall,
China is having a lot problems with their population and just adding the
two-child policy is not going to fix them.
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