UN Hosts Talk on The Preeminent Impact of Two-Child Limits Throughout China’s Great Malthusian Campaign (1/19/2023)
Posted: 1/11/2023 (CSDE Research)
Dr. Daniel Goodkind (Independent Research), an expert on the demographic dynamics in China, will be speaking to the UN’s Population Division on January 19, 2023 at 11am (Pacific). The talk will reflect upon the divisive debates that continue over the demographic impact of China’s half century Malthusian campaign to control its population (1970-2021), the underlying disagreement concerns what to call it. The ubiquitous “one-child policy” label narrows attention to one-child limits imposed during a 35-year sub-era (1980-2015), a long-recognized misnomer that excludes the initial decade of compulsion and obscures the broader program of regulations and enforcements that evolved during that sub-era (and lingered afterwards). The misnomer is further flawed for misidentifying the birth ceiling most responsible for its demographic consequences. This research begins with common ground – that Malthusian intervention reduced China’s current population by over 600 million, independent of developmental forces. It then estimates 200 million one-child era singletons. If half or less of them resulted from compulsion, as conventional wisdom suggests, at least 73 percent of the overall population reduction was due to two-child (and higher) limits and associated regulations, the key constraints even during the one-child era. Relatedly, although one-child limits account for only 166 million of that population reduction (less than half the official estimate of 400 million averted), that estimate jumps to 475 million when the one-child era is broadly defined. A companion analysis of female “missing births” illustrates widespread acceptance of the broader definition. Although routinely attributed to “the one-child policy,” 90 percent or more of missing females were second or later births constrained instead by higher-order birth ceilings. Intuition fails because decades of one-child images, along with each utterance of the phrase, keep refreshing the misnomer.
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Deadline: 01/19/2023
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