China introduced its one-child policy in 1979 to curb population growth and improve living standards. It offered incentives for small families but also enforced strict penalties for violations through fines, loss of benefits, and even forced abortions. While the policy succeeded in significantly reducing birth rates, it has also had unintended social consequences like a gender imbalance favoring males, challenges supporting an aging population, and societal effects on family structure. The policy has since been relaxed but China still faces issues related to its aftermath.

1. Anti-natalist Case study: China
In the late 1970s, the Chinese government introduced a number of measures to
reduce the country's birth rate and slow the population growth rate. The most
important of the new measures was a one-child policy, which decreed that couples in
China could only have one child.
 In 1950 the rate of population change in China was 1.9 per cent each year. If this
doesn't sound high, consider that a growth rate of only 3 per cent will cause the
population of a country to double in less than 24 years!
 Previous Chinese governments had encouraged people to have a lot of children to
increase the country's workforce. But by the 1970s the government realised that
current rates of population growth would soon become unsustainable.
The one-child policy
The one-child policy, established in 1979, meant that each couple was allowed just
one child. Benefits included increased access to education for all, plus childcare and
healthcare offered to families that followed this rule.
Problems with enforcing the policy:
 Those who had more than one child didn't receive these benefits and were fined.
 The policy was keenly resisted in rural areas, where it was traditional to have large
families.
 In urban areas, the policy has been enforced strictly but remote rural areas have
been harder to control.
 Many people claim that some women, who became pregnant after they had already
had a child, were forced to have an abortion and many women were forcibly
sterilised. There appears to be evidence to back up these claims.
Impact of the policy
 The birth rate in China has fallen since 1979, and the rate of population growth is
now 0.7 per cent.
 There have been negative impacts too - due to a traditional preference for boys,
large numbers of female babies have ended up homeless or in orphanages, and in
some cases killed. In 2000, it was reported that 90 per cent of foetuses aborted in
China were female.
 As a result, the gender balance of the Chinese population has become distorted.
Today it is thought that men outnumber women by more than 60 million.
Long-term implications
China's one-child policy has been somewhat relaxed in recent years. Couples can
now apply to have a second child if their first child is a girl, or if both parents are
themselves only-children.
While China's population is now rising more slowly, it still has a very large total
population (1.3 billion in 2008) and China faces new problems, including:
 the falling birth rate - leading to a rise in the relative number of elderly people
 fewer people of working age to support the growing number of elderly dependants -
in the future China could have an ageing population

2. The state offered inducements for having only one child such as;
Free education
Priority housing
Pension
Child care
Family benefits
They also had a rigorous range of punishments if the on child rule was flouted (which
it clearly was, look at the fertility graph, it never reaches 1!) including;
Losing all of the benefits listed above
Fines of up to 15% of the family’s income
In addition, couples could only marry at 22 for a man and 20 for a woman, and had
to apply to the state for permission to first marry and then have a child. This reduces
the reproductive “lifespan” of that couple.
The policy courted lots of controversy, and China’s imbalance in male to female ratio
is evident in the figures about China’s population. It was claimed in the South China
post that once couples knew the sex of a baby some would abort if it was a girl. This
is known as female infanticide. This is because the Chinese value males in their
society more than females because they carry the family name.
It has been documented that some women were forced into having abortions if they
conceived a second child, and persistent offenders were offered sterilisation. The
local factories and communities also had the granny police – who monitored and
spied on prospective mothers. This policy was not enforced in the same manner
across China, and in some areas it was possible to have more than one child,
particularly in rural areas where children were needed to work on farmers.
This policy has had huge social ramifications for China – yes it has reduced the
population growth, but there have been many secondary problems emanate from the
policy. One, it has led to the phenomenon of “Little Emperors”, spoilt single children
who get everything they want! It has also destroyed some family way of life, no
brothers or sisters, no Aunts and Uncles. It also has future ramifications for China’s
dependency ratio – one single child to look after 2 elderly grandparents! This means
that many Chinese simply don’t work in the formal economy but work to look after
their ageing parents. This means that they are not contributing to the economy and
in the past China has relaxed the one child rule. In certain cities today it has been
completely abandoned as cities search for economic growth and a workforce that
can supply it in the future. The last impact has been to create an army of bachelors,
competing for the lower number of females available.