How likely are Chinese to have more kids, now it’s legal?

The World
Li Yan, pregnant with her second child, lies on a bed as her daughter places her head on her mother's stomach in Hefei, Anhui province February 20, 2014.

So China has scrapped the one-child policy.

The reasoning is clear, according to The World’s long-time Beijing correspondent, Mary Kay Magistad. “The workforce is shrinking, the population is aging. Previous attempts to try to get the birthrate/fertility rate to go up a bit have failed. So the government and the party are seeing that they need to take more steps to try to get Chinese to have more kids.”

But will it work?

China’s fertility rate is currently between 1.4 and 1.5 births per woman. The replacement rate is 2.2. The population is currently on track to contract by 25 percent this century. That means having a much larger number of retired people being supported by far fewer workers.

The one-child policy was introduced as an emergency measure in 1979 and formally set in place in 1982. Leaders at the time had clear memories of terrible famines, as recently as the 1950s. Fear was high that over-population would lead to disaster. “I think,” says Magistad, “that the party is recognizing that — having been so concerned that population growth would become a massive problem for China — now it’s starting to recognize that the opposite is at least as big of a problem.”

“However,” adds Magistad, “at this point in China’s economic development, most families are probably only going to have one or two kids. In fact, that squares with what demographers are finding throughout China, not just in the cities and not just among the affluent, but also among the aspiring rural population. They want their kids to go to good schools. They want them to do better than they’ve done.”

That’s not easy. “Housing is extremely expensive. Tuition at all levels is extremely expensive once you get past 9th grade. Healthcare remains very expensive in China.”

“So,” she concludes, “families look at how can we afford to get even one kid through everything they need to go through, and still have enough money saved for a rainy day in case of some sort of emergency, like if our child falls off her bike and breaks her arm,  or something else happens to someone else in the family.  You know, we can just about do that with one kid, how could we possibly do it with two?”

Magistad reported extensively on the one-child policy and other family issues in China while Beijing correpsondent for PRI's The World. She's now host of PRI's podcast Whose Century Is It? — focusing on the ideas, trends and twists shaping the 21st century.

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