The End of China’s One-Child Policy?

China has lost the will to enforce its unpopular one-child policy, largely because the need for enforcement has vanished. Europe and the US have long criticized the one-child policy, blaming it for China’s ballooning aging population and a gender imbalance. Fertility rates have gradually fallen throughout urbanizing and industrializing East Asia, and China is no different. China’s overall fertility gradually declined from 4.7 average number of births per woman of fertile age during the 1970s to 1.7 today, reports the Asia Sentinel. A number of factors depress China’s fertility rate, including a high participation of women in the workforce, short maternity leaves, a lack of daycare, rising costs of child-rearing as well as regional differences and restrictions on internal migration controls. Demographic imbalances lead to social and economic problems, and ending the one-child policy is not a cure-all solution to ending sex selection. – YaleGlobal