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China Ends One-Child Policy
jones_supa writes: China has scrapped its one-child policy, allowing all couples to have two children for the first time since draconian family planning rules were introduced in 1979. The announcement followed a four-day Communist Party summit in Beijing where China's top leaders debated financial reforms and how to maintain growth at a time of heightened concerns over the economy. China will "fully implement a policy of allowing each couple to have two children as an active response to an ageing population," the party said in a statement published by Xinhua.
We have a lot of old people so need even more young people in the hope that some will look after them. ANother generation down the line - those young people become an even bigger population of old people. Rinse and repeat until the human population size causes complete eco collapse.
Whats the solution? Wish I knew.
They haven't ended the policy. They've changed it to a two child policy.
They've still got their hands in things they have no business being in.
If China has had 1-child policy since '79, why has their population increased so much? Shouldn't it have halved by now (2 parents replaced by 1 child)?
China needs more cheap labor, increasing the population will ensure that
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The problem is extreme consumerism of a select few.
Even if every human lived like francis of asissi, which they won't because they are humans, and not every human wants to live like a monk, we still would face the problem of overpopulation a few billion humans down the line. The earth is limited, it has limited space. I don't want to live in a world where the environment is destroyed so that we can get room for feeding / clothing / housing / etc. billions of additional humans.
One day we find out how to eliminate natural causes of death, we perhaps might want to stop reproducing completely. Otherwise this little planet of ours gets crowded too fast.
20 billion humans, so be it. Ok with me. But unlimited growth leads to collapse. Why isn't this recognized on a global scale, why is population control frowned upon? And I don't say an one child policy is good. I guess a limit to have a stable population would be more between 2 and 3 children, as some people don't want to get children, some die, etc.
So you've decided to remove yourself from the equation and abstain having children to help diminish overpopulation?
Or is it that (as it so often is perceived) that it is everyone else but not you/your kids that is the problem?
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
People in the West think that government telling people how many children they can have is one of the highest forms of tyranny, regardless of actual results.
It still is especially when you consider actual results.
China is already in a situation where their foreign policy can afford to be belligerent - they have LOTS of potential soldiers to spare. Do you know what decades of one-child policy, plus a cultural emphasis on male children, has produced? There is a HUGE difference in the number of men to women - tens of millions of men in China for whom there is no chance of a wife, simply because of the numbers.
No family of their own, no children to go home to, and quite possibly no parents alive. China has tens of millions of potential soldiers, none of whom have to worry about what they leave behind when they ship off.
As others have said it might be due simply to the policy not being 100% effective, but even aside form that math can easily provide another answer.
For simplicity let's assume a perfect 50/50 male/female ratio, that everyone gets married, and every family has six children been ages 20 and 40, thus tripling the population every generation. Let's also assume everyone lives to sometime between 60-80 before dropping dead from old age. That means the population of people from 0 to 20 will be thee times that of the population from 20 to 40. However that also means that the population from 60-80 will be one third of that from 40 to 60, which will be one third of that from 20 to 40.
So every 20 years for a given X people in the child bearing range, there will be 3X children being born, but only X/9 old people dying. If you enforced a birth rate of one child per family then for the next twenty years instead of 3X children you would have X/2 children, but that would _still_ be more than the X/9 old people dying during the same period, so the _total_ population would continue to rise for awhile. If you enforced that policy for another 60 years you then would have a steadily decreasing population instead of a steadily increasing one, but the effect does not happen instantaneously.
Obviously the math doesn't work out nearly as neatly in the real world* and the numbers we're talking about usually aren't that extreme. But that should demonstrate how such a thing is possible and this kind of thing is pretty common in delayed feedback loops.
(*Among all the more usual factors, i'm guessing the combination of WW2 and the Cultural Revolution had a significant effect on demographics. I believe such things usually disproportionately affect older people and lead to "bubbles" in the population pyramid.)
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Yeah, it's self regulating, but it also would leave those remaining with a hellish quality of life.
Just another day in Paradise
It still is especially when you consider actual results.
The actual result was matching the population to the food supply and eliminating famine.
...and a skewing towards males, for cultural reasons, that means there's a pretty big gender gap.
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2...
Meh, the 'invisible hand of nature' will regulate the population. Either China (and the rest of the collective globe) will get control of its population growth, or they will spew vast amounts of Co2 as a result of existing in a modern society and the Earth will heat up and kill off vast numbers of people. I don't see 20 billion people living in a carbon neutral fashion any time soon.
Nature will find a level.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
India has the same lopsided gender ratio, along with an infinite-child policy, and they doesn't seem to be getting into a lot of wars.
The idea that we're facing a future of massive overpopulation, and that we have to take drastic measures to avert it, is pure bunk. Overpopulation is only a problem in grossly underdeveloped countries. In every moderately advanced country, the opposite problem is true - birth rates have fallen below replacement levels. Even countries that used to be considered underdeveloped show signs of this. What's causing it? Basically, it's a combination of not needing tons of kids to help with subsistence farming, having basic healthcare so you don't wind up with half your children dying before reaching adulthood, as well as having the ability to engage in family planning/using contraception/etc.
Don't believe me? Look at the birth rates in places like the US, Europe, East Asia, even South America. Consider places like Mexico or Brazil. In 1970, Mexico had a birth rate of 6.72 children per woman, and Brazil was at 5.02, compared to 2.48 in the U.S. In 2012, that has fallen to 2.22 for Mexico and 1.81 for Brazil, while the USA is 1.88. For comparison, the "replacement level" at which the number of births balances out the deaths from age/etc is around 2.1. China is at 1.66 as of 2012, which while not as bad as Japan (1.41) or South Korea (1.3), is still pretty bad. Even India has started slowing, down to 2.5 as of 2012.
Overpopulation is not going to be a problem, unless you're falling prey to an extrapolation fallacy (see https://xkcd.com/605/ ). Even if it is a problem in the shorter term, the answer is easy - improve living standards, access to health care, and provide access to voluntary family planning/contraception. You don't need to force it on people, they'll use it - and far more than most governments want them to. Lots of governments are starting to realize that their problem is how to convince their citizens to have kids, not stop having them.