One of the major policy changes that emerged from China’s recent Third Plenum Congress is a resolution that modifies the “one child” policy. This policy has been in effect since 1981, so the resolution recognizes that the one child policy may no longer be needed, and possibly even that it was mistaken in the first place. The reason why it may have been mistaken is that fertility would have declined a lot after 1981 even without this policy because of the rapid growth in incomes and education, and the shift out of agriculture toward cities.

The one child policy mandates that families can only have one child, but has allowed exceptions for minorities, certain rural families, and parents who are both only children. This policy was often vigorously and cruelly enforced, including forced abortions during very late terms, sterilizations, heavy fines for violations, and occasionally even imprisonment. The new announcement only slightly widens the exceptions by allowing couples to have more than one child even when only one of the parents is an only child. But this change is widely taken as a sign that the government will be much more accepting of families that have additional children.

The many exceptions to the one child rule explains why the average woman continued to have more than one child. For example, in 1990 the total fertility rate (TFR)- the number of children born to the average women over her lifetime- was over 2. By the year 2010 the official data has a TFR of 1.18, but private estimates suggest the number of children is underreported. Adjusted estimates put the TFR at 1.35, and even higher. Still, everyone agrees that the TFR has fallen substantially since the one child policy went into effect from its 1981 level of 2.8.

Before attributing this large decline to the one child policy, one should recognize that China’s per capita income, average education level, and degree of urbanization all grew rapidly in the decades after the reforms of the Chinese economy that began in 1978. Families with higher incomes and greater education who live in urban areas have many fewer children than poorer and less educated families in rural environments.

Although it is not possible to know precisely what Chinese fertility would have been absent the one child policy, preliminary calculations by Jung Sekong and myself based on the effects of income, education, urbanization, and other variables in surrounding Asian countries suggest that China’s TFR in recent years would have been about 1.5 because of the rapid rise in Chinese incomes and education. This means that a large increase in Chinese fertility from its present low level is unlikely even if the one child policy were completely eliminated rather than only modestly relaxed. Intervening changes in China since 1981 due mainly to its radical shift in the late 1970s toward a more market economy would have greatly lowered fertility in any case.

China’s fertility is now somewhat lower than it would have been absent the one child policy, and the decline since 1981 has also probably been more rapid. The many families who were prevented from having more than one child certainly suggest that the policy did bite. Yet, that China’s fertility declined sharply in the 1970s even before the one child policy went into effect indicates there were already forces in China pushing fertility down prior to the introduction of economic reforms.

China’s one child policy has contributed to the rapid aging of the Chinese population even though other powerful forces were also at work. This aging is causing major problems in providing for adequate medical care and retirement income of the elderly since government social security and heath programs are spotty, and many elderly individuals have only one child who might help them out.

Birth decisions by parents that are free to choose their family size are based on the incomes, education, and other personal characteristics of the parents, and on the expected opportunities of their children. Both of these changed rapidly after the late 1970s. China’s one child policy has been an experiment in social engineering that invaded these most personal of decisions. Although it apparently succeeded in lowering China’s fertility below what it would have been, the policy did not anticipate that the economic reforms begun in 1978 would have led to much lower fertility anyway. From this perspective, the policy has been largely unnecessary, and has done more harm than good.

Around 1980, China adopted the “one child” policy, which meant in practice that urban families were limited to one child, while exceptions were made for some rural families, minorities, and others. This policy was enforced strictly in urban and many rural areas; some women were even forced to undergo abortions during the 6th or 7th months of their pregnancies. Whatever sense this policy made at the time-not enough sense, I believe, to justify such draconian measures- its continuation is imposing considerable harm on China.

During the 1950s and ‘60s, Chairman Mao Zedong was very much against government -enforced restrictions on births because he considered them to be Malthusian policies inspired by the West. This and other policies changed radically after Mao’s death and the overthrow of the Gang of Four. In the late 1970s, China started reforming its agriculture policies and other rigid centralized direction of the economy. Chinese political leaders at that time also believed that China’s then high birth rates would impede its economic development through requiring a considerable expenditure of its limited resources on feeding and schooling the many young children that result from high birth rates.

These beliefs about the harmful effects of high fertility overlooked the fact that other Asian countries and regions with much greater population densities than China, including Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, had managed rapid economic development out of high levels of poverty without forcing reductions in birth rates. Birth rates fell rapidly and naturally because of economic growth and rising education of women. These changes raised the cost of parental time that would be spent on raising many children. They also made parents desire fewer but much better educated children, so that their children could participate effectively in modern economies that place great weight on worker skills.

Therefore, birth rates in China would have come down substantially even without its one-child policy as the extension of market reforms and other decentralizations of its economic policies pushed China toward rapid economic development and a much more urbanized economy. I do not believe that the one-child policy significantly increased China’s economic development, and it could even have retarded development, partly because reducing birth rates in an arbitrary fashion made many families very bitter.

China is only a middle-income country, and yet has a very low total fertility rate of between 1.4- 1.6 (this means that the average women is estimated to have between 1.4 and 1.6 children over her lifetime). This rate is far lower than that of the US (with a TFR of about 2.1), and is among the lowest in the world. Urban total fertility rates in China averages less than 1.0 since some urban women never have any children. This may well be the lowest urban fertility rate in any reasonably large country, although cities like Hong Kong And Macao also have total fertility rates below 1, and Singapore is only slightly above 1.

Whether or not my belief is correct that China’s one-child policy hindered, or at least did not encourage, China’s development after it instituted market reforms, the one-child policy did lead to prematurely low birth rates with several serious consequences. One results from the fact that China’s birth rate was forced down rapidly while most Chinese families maintained their traditional preference for sons over daughters.

In a society where families choose their number of births, they usually can satisfy their desire for sons by having several children if the first couple of children are girls (although not in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice). Since the one-child policy put rigid ceilings on family size, families with strong son preferences tried to prevent that child from being a girl. Sometimes, first-born girls were abandoned or even allowed to die. More commonly, parents used modern ultrasound methods to determine early on in a pregnancy if a fetus was a girl. If it were, many women then had abortions so that they could continue to try to have a son as their only child.

The low birth rates in China due to the one-child policy also led to relatively few young adults and relatively many older persons at an earlier state of development than happened in the West and in other developing countries. China’s young adult population is falling rapidly. This made the traditional Chinese method of supporting older parents through help from children more difficult since parents are living longer and are having fewer children. In addition, an age structure with relatively few workers compared to the number of elderly persons makes it harder to implement traditional pay as you go methods of old age support that tax workers to finance benefits to the elderly. Moreover, as James Liang of Stanford has argued, fewer young adults tends to reduce innovation and risk-taking since younger adults are more likely to start businesses and take chances on new ideas.

Fortunately, a large-scale movement has now emerged in China to force the government to alter radically, if not entirely abandon, the one-child policy. Even with its total abandonment, I do not expect more than a 0.2 or 0.3 bump upwards in China’s total fertility rate. This is partly because many families would find it difficult to overturn habits of family formation built up during the one-child era. In addition, with China’s expected development toward an increasingly modern economy, most families will not want more than a couple of children, and many will have only one or even none.

Nevertheless, any adjustment upward in China’s fertility rate to more normal levels would be desirable, for it would remove the harshest effects of its one-child policy. In addition, freely determined fertility rates would correct the distorted sex ratio, and help China regain a more balanced age distribution that would encourage greater rates of innovation and better conditions for the elderly.