On the Transformative Demographic Impact of China’s Great Malthusian Campaign (1970-2021): The Minority Role of One-Child Limits

Daniel M. Goodkind, Independent Researcher

Debates about the impact of China’s half-century campaign to limit its population obscure ambiguities about what to call it. At face value, the one-child policy denotes one feature of a 35-year sub-era (1980-2015), a misnomer that defines away the broader program of birth ceilings, other regulations, and enforcements (1970-2021). This research reveals a more fundamental flaw – one-child limits accounted for a minority of the program’s demographic consequences. The best-known international comparator implies that, upon concluding in 2021, Malthusian intervention reduced China’s population by more than 600 million people independent of developmental forces. An exploratory analysis indicates that one-child limits accounted for no more than166 million of that reduction if, as is often assumed, at least half of one-child era singletons resulted instead from development. However, that estimate nearly triples to 475 million when the one-child era’s enhanced enforcements of all birth quotas and regulations are included. A companion analysis of China’s missing daughters implies unwitting acceptance of the comprehensive definition. Although everywhere associated with the one-child policy, only 12 percent of missing daughters were first births (whose parents faced one-child limits). Intuition fails because decades of one-child images, along with every utterance of the phrase, keep refreshing the misnomer.

Keywords: Decomposition analysis, Population and Development, Population Policies, Economic Demography

See paper.