> While China’s historic programs to push down fertility rates were successful, they were aided by wider societal changes: The policies were in force while China was modernizing and moving toward becoming an industrial and urbanized society.
> It’s policies aimed at increasing the birth rate now find unfavorable societal headwinds. Modernization has led to better educational and work opportunities for women – a factor pushing many to put off having children.
> In fact, most of China’s fertility reduction, especially since the 1990s, has been voluntary – more a result of modernization than fertility-control policies. Chinese couples are having fewer children due to higher living costs and educational expenses involved in having more than one child.
> Another factor to take into consideration is what demographers refer to as the “low-fertility trap.” This hypothesis, advanced by demographers in the 2000s, holds that once a country’s fertility rate drops below 1.5 or 1.4 – far higher than China’s now stands – it is very difficult to increase it by 0.3 or more.
> The argument goes that fertility declines to these low levels are largely the result of changes in living standards and increasing opportunities for women.
> Accordingly, it is most unlikely that China’s three-child policy will have any influence at all on raising the fertility rate. And all my years of studying China’s demographic trends lead me to believe that making contraceptives marginally more expensive will also have very little effect.
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- Chinese and international analysts commonly cite a government‑linked estimate that the policy prevented about 400 million births through a mix of contraception, sterilization, and abortion.
- Forced and coerced abortions: Local officials often pressured or forced women who became pregnant without permission to abort, sometimes very late in pregnancy.
- Sex‑selective abortions: When ultrasound made sex‑determination possible, many families aborted female fetuses because of a strong preference for sons.
- Infanticide and abandonment: Female babies were disproportionately killed, abandoned, or left to orphanages; scholars describe this as an epidemic of female infanticide tied to the policy and son preference.
- “Invisible” children: Some second or third children were born but never officially registered, which denied them schooling, health care, and legal protections.
- Skewed sex ratio and “missing girls”: China’s overall sex ratio shifted markedly toward males; by 2016 there were about 33–35 million more men than women.
- Surplus men (“bare branches”): Tens of millions of men could not find wives, which researchers link to higher risks of social instability, crime, and trafficking.
- Rapid population aging: The birth decline created a top‑heavy population pyramid with too few young workers to support a growing elderly population, worsening the dependency burden.
- Labor‑market effects: Studies find that only‑children often have different social and psychological traits and may earn less, suggesting long‑term effects on productivity and workplace behavior.