In this paper, I will analyze the Chinese government¡¯s decision to implement The One-Child Policy in 1979, based on the goal of increasing economic wealth. I will focus on the short-term effects of the change in the GDP per capita growth rates between 1980 and 1999. There has been a great deal of debate on the issue of how population affects economic variables, beginning in 1798 with Robert Malthus¡¯ famous theory put forth in, ¡°An essay on the principle of population.¡± I will empirically test the effects of population growth on GDP per capita to identify if there is a significant relationship

The population problem is an important question that touches upon the survival and development of the Chinese nation, the success or failure of China¡¯s modernization drive as well as the coordinated and sustained development between the population on one hand, and the economy, society, resources and environment on the other. (1995 White paper, 386)

The policy failed to meet the government¡¯s expectations for population control because of the preference for sons in the rural countryside. Sons were valued more than daughters because sons were the main source of the parent¡¯s income in their old age. The One-Child Policy caused unrest when a new family had a female child as their firstborn and were not being allowed by the government to have any more children. The policy was amended to allow ¡°rural couples in some areas with only a girl to have a second birth after an interval of several years¡± (Peng 54). The combination of a preference for sons and The One-Child Policy has caused female infanticide to be a problem as well as sex selection of births. This has caused the male/female ratio to be increasingly skewed towards males. Although this skewed ratio will be a large problem in the future, it does not have any bearing on my current analysis because of the short time frame I am analyzing.

At the start of the program, it was ¡°suggested that the total population should be controlled below 1.2 billion and the population growth rate should reach zero by the year 2000¡± (Peng 53). Besides decreasing population growth rates, the government promised ¡°to quadruple China¡¯s per Capita GNP by the year 2000¡± (Peng 52). China reached its latter goal if not the former. The fact that they linked these goals together, however, shows that they clearly thought that their current problem stemmed from uncontrolled population growth.

This increase in wealth was accompanied by increases in transportation, education, and health. From 1978 to 1997 ¡°[h]ighways extended to 1.226 million kilometers, up 37.7 per cent; air routes soared to 1.425 million kilometers, a 9.7 fold increase during the same period¡± (Peng 3). China had more than 6.3 million college students in 1997 while the figure was only 1.2 million 20 years ago¡± (Peng 5). China¡¯s infant mortality rate falls from 39 per 1,000 live births in 1979 to 30.24 per 1,000 in 1999. Therefore, the average citizen is better off in 1999, nineteen years after The One-Child Policy was instated. The remainder of this paper will focus how important it was that the government established this policy.

Another challenge the policy faced was international criticism claiming that The One-Child Policy violated human rights. ¡°At the 1984 United Nations International Conference on Population in Mexico City, the Declaration on Population and Development asserted that couples and individuals have ¡®a basic human right to decide freely, responsibly, and without coercion the number and spacing of their children¡¯¡± (United Nations, qtd. in Preston, 623). In addition to the international community, individual countries such as the US ¡°State Department has invoked sanctions against China and against the United Nations Fund for Population Activities for supporting Chinese programs¡± (Preston 627). This international pressure as well as the negative perception of many in the international community is one of the main drawbacks of the policy.

Some topics in this essay:
One-Child Policy, Deng Xiaoping¡¯s, Guofeng China¡¯s, China¡± Peng, Child Policy, White Paper, Capita GNP, Policy Recent, Population Activities, Robert Malthus¡¯, population growth, one-child policy, gdp capita, birth rates, growth rate, labor force, chinese government, family planning, population growth rate, crude birth, economic growth, limit population growth, 1995 white paper, gdp capita growth, growth one-child policy,