Population 4.4

Question 1

What is a Pro Natalist Policy?

Answer 1

• Policy to increase population when a country is worried that their working population is declining and number of old people is increasing.
• Singapore adopted a pro natalist policy known as ‘3 or more’ to grow it’s population.

Question 2

What is an Anti Natalist Policy?

Answer 2

• Policy is adopted to decrease population growth when a country is worried that its population is rising too quickly.
• China introduced an anti-natalist policy known as the ‘1 child policy’.

Question 3

China OCP Case Study: Why?

Answer 3

• China’s population stood at 550 million when the Communist government, under the leadership of Mao Zedong, took power in 1949.
• He encouraged large families as he saw them as a source of strength, raising workers for the future.
• China’s “Great Leap Forward” also led to a famine between 1959 and 1961 which took the lives of more than 30 million people in China.
• However, Zedong’s promotion of rapid population growth meant the total population had doubled to 1.13 billion by 1990.
• The One Child Policy came into effect after a period of a two-child policy by Deng Xiaoping in 1979 in an attempt to further reduce population growth.

Question 4

China OCP Case Study: How?

Answer 4

• Couples who had one child were given benefits such as longer maternity/paternity leave, better housing, free healthcare, and free education.
• If a second child was born, these benefits were stopped and they were fined a proportion of their income.
• Free contraception and family planning advice.
• The ‘granny police’ to spy on couples in their neighborhoods.
• Acceptance of late abortions to terminate second pregnancies.

Question 5

China OCP Case Study: impacts?

Answer 5

• 400 million births were prevented.
• Fertility rate fell from 6.4 in 1966 to 1.6 in 2010.
• The policy was very unpopular in rural areas as families required children to work. This led to infanticide where baby girls were allowed to die so that the family could try for a boy.
• Created a disparity in childbirth sex ratio. There are now 118 men for every 100 women.
• To counter the problem of the one-child policy, some families would travel to a foreign country or to Hong Kong for the birth of their second child.
• It was unequally enforced.

Question 6

China OCP Case Study: future troubles?

Answer 6

• The ‘4-2-1 problem’: As the Chinese population becomes older, the single child will have to support two aging parents and four grandparents.
• The ‘little emperor problem’: The idea that single children tend to be indulged and spoilt and therefore may struggle to work with others when they grow up.
• The ‘spare branch problem’: Due to there now being 30 million more young men than women, some may not be able to find wives.