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China's Former 1-Child Policy Continues To Haunt Families

The legacy of China's one-child rule is still painfully felt by many of those who suffered for having more children. Ran Zheng for NPR hide caption

The legacy of China's one-child rule is still painfully felt by many of those who suffered for having more children.

Editor's note: This story contains descriptions that may be disturbing.

LINYI, China — Outside, rain falls. Inside, a middle-school student completes his homework. His mother watches him approvingly.

She is especially protective of him. He's the youngest of three children this mother had under China's one-child policy.

Giving birth to him was a huge risk — and she took no chances. She carried her son to term while hiding in a relative's house. She wanted to avoid the "family planning officials" in her home village, just outside Linyi, a city of 11 million in China's northern Shandong province, where the policy's enforcement was especially violent.

What was she hiding from? What could the family planning officials have done to her? She demurs, her voice growing quiet. "All we can do is go on living," she says. "There is no use in trying to make sense of society."

A mother and a grandmother take care of a child in Beijing on Jan. 1, 2016. Married couples in China in 2016, were allowed to have two children, after concerns over an aging population and shrinking workforce ushered in an end to the country's controversial one-child policy. Fred Dufour/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Her son is part of the last generation of children in China whose births were ruled illegal at the time. Anxious that rapid population growth would strain the country's welfare systems and state-planned economy, the Chinese state began limiting how many children families could have in the late 1970s.

The limit in most cases was just one child. Then in 2016, the state allowed two children. And in May, after a new census showed the birth rate had slowed, China raised the cap to three children. State media celebrated the news.

But the legacy of the one-child rule is still painfully felt by many parents who suffered for having multiple children. For some, the pain is still too much to bear.

"It has been so many years, and I have let the pain go," the mother of three says, eyes downcast. "If you carry it with you all the time, it gets too tiring."

A mother's quandary

One night in August 2008, the mother made a fateful decision. Her body was giving her all the telltale signs that she was pregnant — again.

She already had two children and had gone through four abortions afterward, to avoid paying the ruinously high "social maintenance fee" demanded from families as penalty when they contravened birth limits.

Medical staff massage babies at an infant care center in Yongquan, in Chongqing municipality, in southwest China, on Dec. 15, 2016. China had 1 million more births in 2016 than in 2015, following the end of the one-child policy. AFP via Getty Images hide caption

But this time she felt differently.

"I had already had two children but my heart just did not feel right," says the woman, now in her 50s, who works part time in a canning factory. NPR isn't using her name to protect her identity because of the trauma she suffered. "I thought this is it — if I do not have this child, my body will not be able to have any more."

Officials in her village were actively policing families under the one-child policy. Enforcement of the policy had begun to loosen by the early 2000s, as horrific stories of forced abortions and botched sterilizations caused policymakers to rethink the rule. But starting in 2005, the authorities began enforcing the policy with a renewed ferocity in Linyi.

So the mother went into hiding to carry her son to term. One night, family planning officials approached her husband, intending to pressure him and his wife into ending the pregnancy. He used a pickax to drive them off and was imprisoned for that for half a year.

An old friend of hers, the blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng , knows full well what she and tens of thousands of other women in Linyi city went through.

Chinese parents, who have children born outside the country's one-child policy, protest outside the family planning commission in an attempt to have their fines canceled in Beijing, on Jan. 5, 2016. For decades, China's family planning policy limited most urban couples to one child and rural couples to two if their first was a girl. Ng Han Guan/AP hide caption

"The doctors would inject poison directly into the baby's skull to kill it," Chen says, drawing on recordings he made of interviews with hundreds of women and their families in Linyi. "Other doctors would artificially induce labor. But some babies were alive when they were born and began crying. The doctors strangled or drowned those babies."

The terror of such enforcement of birth limits was widespread in Linyi, even if residents were not themselves planning on giving birth.

"Officials would kidnap you if you tried to have two children. If you were hiding and they could not find you, they would kidnap your elder relatives and make them stand in cold water, in the winter," remembers Lu Bilun, a resident.

Lu says the harassment became so savage that elderly residents of Linyi became afraid to leave their homes out of fear they might be kidnapped. Lu says he paid a 4,000 yuan fine to have his second son in 2006 (about $500 at the time), after hiding his wife for months. "This was not your average level of policy enforcement. It was vicious," he says.

Chen, the lawyer, mounted a class action lawsuit on behalf of Linyi's women. The suit led to an apology from the authorities in Linyi and a reduction in the kidnappings, beatings and forced abortions.

Children ride a toy train at a shopping mall in Beijing, on Oct. 30, 2015. China's decision to abolish its one-child policy offered some relief to couples and to sellers of baby-related goods, but the government hasn't lifted birth limits entirely. Andy Wong/AP hide caption

But the Chinese government punished Chen for his activism by imprisoning him, then trapping him for nearly three years in his home , in a village just outside Linyi.

In 2012, Chen escaped by scaling a wall and running to the next village, despite being blind and having broken his foot during the escape. There, he was picked up by supporters and driven to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. He was able to fly to the U.S . after weeks of tense negotiation. Today, he lives in Maryland with his family.

The price of defiance

"The policy was wrong and what we did with Chen was right," says a neighbor of Chen, the lawyer who sued the city of Linyi. The man wants to remain unnamed because he believes he could be harassed again for speaking of that time.

In the 1990s, he says, family planning officials ambushed him in his home at night and beat him with sticks in an effort to convince his wife to abort their third son.

Chinese lawyer Chen Guangcheng attends a rally to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre June 4, 2019, at the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol. Chen had been persecuted and detained in China after his work advising villagers and speaking out official abuses under the one-child rule. Alex Wong/Getty Images hide caption

"Our country's leaders did not want us to have children and I didn't know why, but we could not do anything about it," he sighs.

He and his wife persevered and had three sons. They did not officially register the last two to avoid paying a fine, but the father says he still paid a bribe to family planning officials to avoid further harassment. These economic penalties depleted his life savings, a financial impact that compounded over the ensuing years.

The policy permeates through Chinese society in other, sometimes unexpected ways. Because many prioritized having a son over a daughter, orphanages experienced a surge in baby girls who were abandoned or put up for adoption. Single's Day, China's biggest online shopping holiday — akin to Black Friday in the U.S. — is a recognition of the many bachelors who are unable to find partners in a gender-skewed society.

"A very unbalanced population gender-wise has also led to a rise in property prices in major cities because families of men have bought apartments to make their sons eligible in a marriage market where there are millions of missing women," says Mei Fong , who wrote a book on the one-child rule. "These effects will be felt in the generation ahead."

A child walks near government propaganda one of which reads "1.3 billion people united" on the streets of Beijing, China, Tuesday, March 8, 2016. Ng Han Guan/AP hide caption

According to the census conducted last year, the population is aging and there are fewer young children and working-age people, a major demographic shift that comes with its own economic strains. That's pushing policymakers to consider raising the official retirement age — currently 60 for men and 55 for women — for the first time in 40 years.

Yet the authorities still only allow couples to have three children. Why won't China remove all caps?

"Despite all the overwhelming demographic evidence, they're saying, 'We need to control you,'" says the author, Fong. Anxious about already strained public education and health care systems, China's leadership is reportedly considering ditching limits entirely. It has been slow to completely dismantle its massive family planning bureaucracy built up over the past four decades. And according to an Associated Press investigation , it continues to impose stricter controls over births — including forced sterilizations — among ethnic minorities, like the Turkic Uyghurs.

Some demographers in China argue that instituting birth limits was necessary for keeping birth rates low. But Stuart Gietel-Basten, a demographer at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, cautions there is no definitive answer. "There is only one China and there is only one one-child policy, so it is kind of impossible to say the real effect of that was [of the policy]," he says.

Families were already having fewer children in the 1970s, before the policy took force in 1979. "The one-child policy was not the only thing that happened in China in the 1980s and 1990s," Gietel-Basten says. "There was also rapid urbanization, economic growth, industrialization, female emancipation and more female labor force participation."

A man and a child are reflected on a glass panel displaying a tiger at the Museum of Natural History in Beijing, Dec. 2, 2016. Andy Wong/AP hide caption

It was worth the cost

The fact that the children are alive at all makes Chen, the lawyer, feel his seven years in prison and house arrest were all worth it.

"I really feel happy. Even if I had to go to prison and endure beatings, in the end, these children were able to survive. They must be in middle school or high school by now."

The mother of one of these middle schoolers holds her son close. Part of the reason she demurred when first speaking to NPR was because of how dearly her family fought for his birth.

Her worries these days are more mundane. She wants to start preparing for her son's marriage — a costly endeavor as rural families expect the husband to provide a material guarantee for any future wife.

"That requires buying them a car, an apartment. No one can afford that," she complains.

Her job at a nearby canning factory refuses to hire her full time, she says, because she is a mother of three and needs to leave every afternoon to pick up her son from school.

And so, ironically, now that people are allowed to have more children, they are increasingly reluctant to, because of the high cost of child care and education.

"Women have it all figured out now — they won't have more kids even when they're told to have more!" the mother laughs helplessly.

"People act in funny ways," she says. "There is no point in controlling them."

• Chinese population
• Chinese law
• Chinese society
• one-child policy

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Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

Assessing the impact of the “one-child policy” in China: A synthetic control approach

Contributed equally to this work with: Stuart Gietel-Basten, Xuehui Han, Yuan Cheng

Roles Conceptualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Division of Social Sciences, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, PRC

Roles Data curation, Formal analysis, Methodology, Software, Writing – original draft

Affiliation Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Beijing, PRC

Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Methodology, Software, Supervision, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Population Research Institute, LSE-Fudan Research Centre for Global Public Policy, Fudan University, Shanghai, PRC

• Stuart Gietel-Basten, 
• Xuehui Han, 

• Published: November 6, 2019
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220170
• Reader Comments

There is great debate surrounding the demographic impact of China’s population control policies, especially the one-birth restrictions, which ended only recently. We apply an objective, data-driven method to construct the total fertility rates and population size of a ‘synthetic China’, which is assumed to be not subjected to the two major population control policies implemented in the 1970s. We find that while the earlier, less restrictive ‘later-longer-fewer’ policy introduced in 1973 played a critical role in driving down the fertility rate, the role of the ‘one-child policy’ introduced in 1979 and its descendants was much less significant. According to our model, had China continued with the less restrictive policies that were implemented in 1973 and followed a standard development trajectory, the path of fertility transition and total population growth would have been statistically very similar to the pattern observed over the past three decades.

Citation: Gietel-Basten S, Han X, Cheng Y (2019) Assessing the impact of the “one-child policy” in China: A synthetic control approach. PLoS ONE 14(11): e0220170. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220170

Editor: Bruno Masquelier, University of Louvain, BELGIUM

Received: October 24, 2018; Accepted: July 2, 2019; Published: November 6, 2019

Copyright: © 2019 Gietel-Basten et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files.

Funding: The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology provided support for this study in the form of salaries for SGB, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank provided support for this study in the form of salaries for XH, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Fudan University provided support for this study in the form of salaries for YC, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section.

Competing interests: The authors have read the journal's policy and the authors of this manuscript have the following competing interests: SGB is paid employee of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, XH is paid employees of Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, YC is paid employees of Fudan University. There are no patents, products in development or marketed products associated with this research to declare. This does not alter the authors' adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Introduction

In 2015, China finally ended all one-birth restrictions [ 1 ]. The move to a national two-child policy is intended to facilitate a more balanced population development and to counter aging. There is currently a large focus placed on the appraisal of the population control policies (often erroneously thought of as the ‘one-child policy’) imposed in the late 1970s [ 2 ]. The world's most comprehensive national-level population control policy has been subject to many criticisms, both domestically and internationally [ 3 , 4 ]. Sanctioned and unsanctioned instances of forced abortion [ 5 ], sterilization [ 6 ], and institutional financial irregularities [ 7 ] have been identified as bases for criticism. The policies have also been cited as the root cause of other challenges [ 8 ], including skewed sex ratios at birth [ 9 ], the questionable demographic data because of hidden children [ 10 ], and social problems associated with the enforced creation of millions of one-child families (like the social, economic, and psychological plight of couples who lost their only child and are now unable to have more children) [ 11 ].

On the other hand, China's population control policies have also been recognized as being effective. This ‘effectiveness’ is based on the estimations that hundreds of millions of births had been ‘averted’ [ 12 ] and the penalty of “above-quota-births” was found reducing births in rural China [ 13 ]. According to an environmentalist narrative, these births (and the resultant population growth) would have contributed to further climate change [ 14 ]. In 2014, for example, The Economist labeled the ‘China one-child policy’ as the fourth largest ‘action’ to slow global warming, estimated at 1.3bn tonnes of CO2 [ 15 ]. Elsewhere, the popular media, as well as other commentators, regularly espouse a ‘one-child policy' as a panacea to respond to perceived ‘overpopulation' and associated concerns of both an environmental and Malthusian nature. Indeed, UN Resident Coordinator in Kenya, Siddharth Chatterjee, said in 2017 the first annual Africa-China Conference on Population and Development, "China is an example to the rest of the developing countries when it comes to family planning."

These calculations of ‘births averted’ are based on various models, which employ counterfactual history. The estimate of ‘400 million births averted’ is attributed to the one-child population policy [ 16 ], which is usually calculated by holding earlier, higher fertility rates constant. Other estimates compared the Chinese experience with either a country or group of countries considered to be similar to China in terms of certain socioeconomic and political indicators. The problem with such counterfactual histories is that they are inevitably subjective and indicators considered did not enter into the model in a systematic way. Contrast to the estimation of 400 million births averted, the effect of the one-child policy is found to be small, especially for the long-run [ 17 ], which was attributed to the aggressive family planning program in the early 1970s [ 18 ] based on the findings that the birth rate of 16 countries with similar birth rates to that of China in 1970 declined significantly after 1979 and even sharper than what was observed in China [ 19 ].

To evaluate the impact of China’s population control policies, we employ the Synthetic Control Method where we compare China to a constructed ‘synthetic’ control population, which shares similar features with China during the pre-intervention periods. This innovative data- and math-driven methodology is used extensively in many disciplines, including public health [ 20 ], politics [ 21 ], and economics [ 22 ]. One of the caveats of our paper is that we cannot single out the ‘cohort’ effects. In addition to the socio-economic factors, the decline of TFRs might partially be the result that females entering childbearing age in 1970s did not think giving more births is “fashionable” compared to those who entered childbearing age in 1950s. Such mindset changes have been observed in Brazil [ 23 ]. Unfortunately, our approach cannot differentiate the cohort effect from the impact of social-economic factors. We have to bear in mind this caveat in the following analysis.

In the case of China, the first intervention (or ‘shock’) we seek to evaluate is the ‘Later-Longer-Fewer Policy’ introduced in 1973 [ 7 ]. Under this policy, a minimum age of marriage was imposed, as well as mandatory birth spacing for couples and a cap on the total number of children [ 24 ]. The rules were differentiated for men and women in rural and urban areas. Also, like the case in other countries, widespread contraception (and free choice) was introduced, coupled with large-scale education on family planning [ 25 ]. The second ‘shock’ is the ‘One-Child Policy' introduced in 1979, where a one-child quota was strictly enforced. Following initial ‘shock drives' of intensive mass education, insertion of IUDs after the first birth, sterilization after the second birth, and large-scale abortion campaigns, the policy quickly became unpopular and was reformed in 1984 and onwards, creating a very heterogeneous system [ 26 ]. Despite the series of reforms, the majority of couples in China were still subject to one-child quotas in the 1980s and 1990s.

Institutional Background

With high birth rates in the 1970s, the Chinese government had grown increasingly concerned about the capacity of existing resources to support the ballooning population. In response, from 1973, the Chinese government widely promoted the practice of ‘later-longer-fewer’ to couples, referring respectively to later marriage and childbearing, longer intervals between births, and fewer children. Rules were more severe in urban areas where women were encouraged to delay marriage until the age of 25 and men at 28 and for couples to have no more than two children. In the rural areas, the age of marriage was set at a minimum of 23 for women, and 25 for men and the maximum family size was set at three children. Birth control methods and family planning services were also offered to couples. The policy at the time can be considered “mild” in a sense that couples were free to choose what contraceptive methods they would use and the policy on family planning was more focused on the education of the use of contraceptives [ 27 ].

However, such mild family planning program was deemed insufficient in controlling the population, since it would not be able to meet the official target of 1.2 billion people by 2000 despite the large decrease in the total fertility rate (TFR) in the late 1970s. In 1979, the government introduced the One-Child Policy in the Fifth National People’s Congress, a one-size-fits-all model and widely considered the world’s strictest family planning policy. Some exemptions were allowed, and a family could have more than one child if the first child has a disability, both parents work in high-risk occupations, and/or both parents are from one-child families themselves. The State Family Planning Bureau aimed to achieve an average of 1.2 children born per woman nationally in the early and mid-1980s [ 27 ].

From 1980 to 1983, the one-child policy was implemented through "shock drives" in the form of intensive mass education programs, IUD insertion for women after the first birth, sterilization for couples after the second birth, and abortion campaigns for the third pregnancy [ 27 , 28 ]. Policies were further enforced by giving incentives for compliance and disincentives for non-compliance, though these varied across local governments [ 27 ]. Liao [ 29 ] identified the following as the usual benefits and penalties at the local level. Families with only one child can obtain benefits like child allowance until age 14; easier access to schools, college admission, employment, health care, and housing; and reduction in tax payments and the opportunity to buy a larger land for families in rural areas. Penalties for having above-quota births, on the other hand, include reduction in the parents’ wages by 10 to 20 percent for 3 to 14 years, demotion or ineligibility for promotion for parents who work in the government sector, exclusion of above-quota children to attend public schools, and, in rural areas, a one-time fine which may account for a significant fraction of the parents’ annual income.

The tight one-child policy was met by resistance, and the government allowed more exemptions [ 27 ]. Exemptions were drafted at the local level as the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee took into account the diverse demographic and socioeconomic conditions across China [ 30 ]. In 1984, the program allowed two births per couple in rural areas if the first child is a girl or if the family is from a minority ethnic group, but this was done only in six provinces. One significant change in the family planning policy is that couples with one daughter in rural areas could have a second child after a certain interval, which ranges from four to six years, and this was fully implemented in 18 provinces by the end of 1989. The performance of local cadres was also evaluated with family planning activity as the top criterion [ 27 ]. The stringency of the one-child policy was further moderated amid China’s commitment to the International Conference on Population Development held in Cairo in 1994. In 1995, the family planning program changed its stance from being target-driven to client-centered in adherence to international reproductive health standards. More attention was given to individual contraceptive rights, and the government allowed couples to choose their contraceptive method with the guidance of the professional and technical staff [ 22 ].

Throughout the 1990s, provinces amended their own regulations about the exemptions under the guidelines of the State Family Planning Commission, now the National Population and Planning Commission [ 30 ]. According to Gu et al. [ 30 ], the provincial-level exemptions on allowing more than one child in a family can be classified into four broad groups: (1) gender-based and demographic (if the couple living in a rural area had the only daughter, or they belong to one-child family themselves); (2) economic (if the couple work in risky occupations or have economic difficulties); (3) political, ethical, and social (if the couple belong to a minority ethnic group, the man is marrying into a woman’s family, the family is a returning overseas Chinese, or the person has the status of being a single child of a revolutionary martyr); and (4) entitlement and replacement (if the couple’s first child died or is physically handicapped, the person who is divorced or widowed remarries, or the person is the only productive son in a family of multiple children in the rural area).

While the central government had asserted that population control remains a basic state policy, it hardly implemented a uniform set of rules across the country, hence the varying exemptions across localities [ 30 ]. This was until the Population and Family Planning Law of 2001 was put into effectivity. The law summarized the rights and obligations of Chinese citizens in family planning and served as the legal basis for addressing population issues at the national level. This law still promoted the one-child policy, but couples were given more reproductive rights, including the right to decide when to have children and the spacing between children if having a second child is allowed, as well as the right to choose contraceptive methods. It also discussed the imposition of social compensation fees for those who violated the law, which will be collected by local governments and family planning officials [ 27 ].

The one-child policy was further loosened in 2013 when it was announced that two children would be allowed if one parent is an only child [ 31 ]. Basten and Jiang [ 32 ] summarized the popular views on the issues that can be addressed by this policy shift: skewed sex ratio at birth, projected decline of the working-age population, large number of couples who were left childless because of the death of their only child, and evasion and selective enforcement of fines for out-of-quota and unauthorized births. They, however, argued that this change in the one-child policy could only have minimal impact on the aging population and shrinking workforce because of fertility preferences to have only one child and a smaller likelihood of these births to occur.

It was announced in October 2015 that the one-child policy would be replaced by a universal two-child policy. Driven by some evidence that this relaxation of the policy has not achieved a significant birth boosting effect, the Chinese government has started in 2018 to draft a proposed law that will remove all the limits on the number of children families can have [ 33 ].

The Synthetic control method

As reflected in the above procedure, the core of this method focuses on finding the combination of countries that collectively resemble China before the intervention. The model automatically assigns different weights to different countries in such a way that the distance between the actual and synthetic China before the policy intervention will be minimized in terms of fertility rate and other related characteristics. The optimal weights then are applied to the other countries for the post-intervention period to obtain Synthetic China without either the 1973 intervention or the 1979 intervention.

The next step is to decide what variables should be included in vector Z. We chose to include the childbearing age, life expectancy at birth, and sex ratio of male to female between 0 and 4 years old as the non-economic variables. The childbearing age affects the mothers’ age-specific fertility intensity and the total fertility rate [ 34 , 35 ]. With the maximum fertility age being certain, higher childbearing age might imply lower TFR. The life expectancy at birth is related to age-specific mortality. With a lower mortality rate, fewer births are required to obtain a desired number of children. For example, as observed by Galor [ 36 ], the TFR declined while the life expectancy improved in Western Europe in the past half-century. The sex ratio of male to female represents the inner-gender competition. A higher sex ratio of male to female implies higher competition among males, so it is more rewarding for females to delay marriage and to give birth in exchange for opportunities to obtain a better match with males. Using data from England and a generalized linear model, Chipman and Morrison [ 37 ] confirmed the significant negative relationship between the sex ratio of male to female and birth rate, especially for the three age groups of females at 20–24, 25–29, and 30–34 years old.

The other group of variables included in vector Z is economic variables, such as GDP per capita and years of schooling. The New Home Economics approach [ 38 ] emphasizes the negative relationship between income and fertility rate through the role of the opportunity cost of parenting time. The model suggests that more children will consume more parenting time, which could otherwise be used to generate more income. Galor and Weil [ 39 ] strengthened the reasoning by arguing that the increase in capital per capita raises women’s relative wages because the complementary effect of capital to female labor is higher than to male labor. The increase in women’s relative wage raises the cost of children. Because of the resulting smaller population effect, the lower fertility further raises the GDP per capita. In addition to the parenting opportunity cost, the economic development might result in fertility declines through two other channels:(1)With economic development, the living standards improved and the mortality rate decreased so that parents can have the same desirable living kids with fewer births; and (2) With the economic development, people have more tools to save, for example, the pension system, which reduces the needs of having more offspring to finance the retirement. The relationships between the macro-economy and the fertility patterns are documented for China [ 40 , 41 , 42 ]. The years of schooling also affects fertility through the opportunity costs channel. Higher education is associated with higher productivity, which would induce the higher opportunity cost of raising children.

Our analysis uses the TFR data in the period of 1955–1959 from the United Nations’ World Population Prospects (WPP) and the annual TFR data in 1960 to 2015 from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators (WDI) except for the following five economies. For Curaçao, Luxembourg, Serbia, Seychelles, and Taiwan, we use the UN’s WPP data in the entire period of 1955 to 2015. Like in the TFR data, we use the life expectancy at birth data in the period 1955–1959 from the UN’s WPP data, while annual life expectancy data in 1960 to 2015 is obtained from the WDI, except for the following four economies. For Curaçao, Serbia, Seychelles, and Taiwan, we use the UN’s WPP in the entire period of 1955 to 2015. The whole data series of the male-to-female ratio of the population aged 0–4 years old are obtained from the UN. We use the expenditure-side real GDP at chained PPPs and the size of population data from the Penn World Tables 9.0 (PWT 9.0) to calculate the GDP per capita and get its natural logarithm. The average years of schooling data obtained from the Barro-Lee Database is used to measure the average level of education in a given country. Historical schooling data are only available at five-year intervals, so we apply a linear interpolation method to infer the annual data from 1950 to 2010. The average childbearing age data are from the UN’s WPP in the entire period of 1955 to 2015. Additionally, all WPP data, except the male-to-female ratio, are only available at a five-year interval, so we also employ the linear interpolation method to get the annual estimates.

The original dataset consisted of 184 countries, but after removing the countries with missing data for the needed variables from 1955 to 2010, only 64 countries remained in the final dataset for the analysis, including China. The final list of countries included in the analysis is provided in Table A in S1 File .

Empirical result

For simplicity, we label synthetic China as Synth China, whose characteristics are constructed using the values of the other countries and the countries’ corresponding weights. We present the average values of our target variable TFR and fertility-related variables for Synth China and our comparator in Table 1 . The column on China shows the actual numbers for China, while the column on Synth China displays the values for the counterfactual Synth China for the pre-1973 period and pre-1979 and post-1973 period. For comparison purposes, we also include the average values of all countries in the sample as our comparator to show how different it would be between actual China and the whole sample in the absence of synthesizing. Looking at the pre-1973 period, Synth China has the same average TFR of 5.85 as actual China, while our comparator has an average of 4.71. For the remaining variables, the values of Synth China are all closer to that of actual China than those of our comparator, which indicates that Synth China resembles actual China not only in terms of TFR but also in terms of other fertility-related characteristics. Looking at the pre-1979 and post-1973 period, the TFR of Synth China is again almost the same as that of actual China.

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220170.t001

All the other variables of Synth China are more comparable to actual China than to our comparator, except for average years of schooling. The significant difference (1.65 years) in years of schooling for the period of 1973–1979 between China (4.66 years) and the Synthetic cohort (6.31 years) is mainly due to the school-year-reduction-reform to taken by the Chinese government during the cultural revolution period (1966–1976). The original 6 years of primary schooling, 3 years of middle school, and 3 years of high school (6-3-3) for the pre-1966 periods were reduced to 5-2-2, respectively [ 43 ]. That means the same length of years of schooling represented higher accomplishment in terms of a diploma during 1966–1976. Five years of schooling in this period indicated completion of preliminary school while it used to represent the unaccomplished preliminary school. Most countries included in the studies adopted the 12-year schooling system. If we measure the accomplishment of education by using the relative years of schooling, which is to scale down by the years required for completion of high school—52% (4.66/9) for actual China and 53% (6.31/12) for Synthetic cohort—we would have quite close level of relative years of schooling between China and the Synthetic cohort. Additionally, the difference in years of schooling between actual China and the Synthetic cohort was not as significant for the pre-1973 intervention period (1965–1973) as for the pre-1979 and post-1973 period is because even the implementation of the school-year-reduction-reform was started from 1966 it requires five years for the effects to be fully materialized. The education system was changed back to 6-3-3 system after 1976.

In the following simulation, we use the periods 1973–1979 and 1980–2015 as the post-intervention periods to quantify the impact of the first and second shocks, respectively.

The TFR simulated for Synth China assuming without the 1973 shock, with the 1973 shock but without the 1979 shock, and the actual TFR are plotted in Fig 1 . The dashed blue line represents synthetic China's simulated TFR in the period 1955–1979 assuming without 1973 shock. The gap between the Synth China and actual China (represented by the solid black line) between 1973 and 1979 is the reduction in the TFR caused by the 1973 intervention. The dotted green line is the TFR of Synth China estimated for the period 1973–2015 with the period 1973–1979 as the pre-intervention period set to search for the optimal weights, which is to find the best comparable countries with fertility behaviors like China with 1973 shock but without 1979 shock. The simulated TFR for periods after 1979 is supposed to represent the TFR of China with the 1973 policy but without the 1979 policy. Contrary to the commonly claimed radical effect, the “One-Child” policy in 1979 only induced a small dip in the TFR.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220170.g001

As shown in Fig 1 , the TFR in synthetic China is already well above the real TFR, even before the 1973 shock. The reason is that the best fit found by the algorithm cannot match the whole pattern of actual TFR (a complete overlap of actual and simulated China) for the pre-intervention periods, especially for the pre-1973 period (blue line). As shown in section 3, the target function for optimization is ‖ X 1 − WX 0 ‖, which measures the distance between the mean of actual China and Syn China without the policy of 73&79 for years before 1973. When the pattern of actual TFR is not well regulated, the simulated TFRs for the pre-1973 periods cannot match actual China for each year of the time series but to match on the average over the periods. It is why for pre-1960 periods, the blue line is above the black line while for the periods of1960-1970, the blue line is below the black line. Our conjecture on the reason for the irregular pattern of actual China in pre-1973 periods is that the government had been in a population policy struggling during this period [ 44 ] and the after-effect of the great fluctuations caused by China's Great Leap Forward famine (1958–1962). For example, right after the promotion of birth control policy in 1957, the birth control was catalyzed as anti-government in 1958. Not until 1962, birth control was encouraged again. Such changes of direction of the policy were very hard to simulate by finding the best comparable. Additionally, we identify the official announcement of "Later-Longer-Fewer Policy" in 1973 as the "shock." The informal introduction of such an idea started from 1971 when the encouragement of birth control was included as a "national" strategic policy. But only until 1973, the policy was announced officially with details. This explains why the SynthChina with FP 73&79 is already above actual China in 1973.

One interesting observation is that the TFR of Synth China with 1973 shock but without 1979 shock is lower than the observed TFR since 2003. Combining with the fact that the TFR reported in the Sixth Census in 2010 is lower than the TFR of Synth China, this appears to be providing indirect evidence on the common suspicion that the statistics on fertility rate might be “too low” and therefore the fertility effect of the 1979 policy could have been overstated.

Next, we apply the permutation test to evaluate the significance and robustness of the estimations. To do this, we produce a simulated sample of 500 countries by randomly drawing with replacement from the actual sample of 63 countries with China being excluded. Each country is treated as if it were China and is subjected to the 1973 and 1979 shocks. We construct the synthetic TFRs by following the same procedure carried out for Synth China. For each year, we calculate 500 simulated gaps between actual and synthetic TFRs, as shown in Fig 2 . The gaps for the simulated countries are represented by the grey lines, while the 95% confidence intervals by the red lines. The solid line denotes the gap between actual and Synth China, which is well below the lower bound of the 95% confidence interval from 1973 to 1979, indicating a significant reduction impact from the 1973 shock ( Fig 2 ). Meanwhile, the TFR gap between actual and Synth China stays within the confidence interval from 1980 onwards, implying that the 1979 shock had no significant impact ( Fig 2 ).

(A)Permutation test with 1973 policy–gap between true TFR and synthetic TFR. (B) Permutation test with 1979 policy–gap between true TFR and synthetic TFR.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220170.g002

Population projection is carried out by using Spectrum 10 , wherein the actual TFR was replaced by the synthetic TFR from 1979 to 2015.

As Fig 1 and Fig 2 show, had China not implemented its later-longer-fewer set of population control measures in 1973, the fall in TFR would have been much shallower. Translating this into total population, this would amount to a difference of around 85 million by the end of the 1970s ( Fig 3 ). The impact of the second ‘shock,' namely the introduction of the stricter control measures in 1979, appears to be much more muted. While there are differences in the 1980s as a result of the reform involving the regulation on marriage age, the TFR for Synth China and actual China are broadly in sync from the early 1990s. In terms of total population difference, Synth China is some 70 million lower than actual China by 2015, as shown in Fig 3 . As discussed above, this puzzling outcome of the second shock might be due to the overstating tendency of the fertility statistics. Based on the permutation tests shown in Fig 2 , we can conclude that the 1973 policy significantly reduced the population by 85 million, while the 1979 policy does not have a statistically significant impact.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220170.g003

Furthermore, we use a bootstrap strategy to get the confidence interval for the population estimates assuming without the shock of 1973 policy. We randomly drew 500 sub-samples with the size of 90% of the original sample without replacement. For each sub-sample, we repeated the synthetic control approach to search for the best synthetic China in terms of TFR. Among the 500 subsamples, two samples cannot converge. Therefore, in the end, we have 498 Synthetic China. We further get the 5% lower and upper bounds of TFRs among simulated Synthetic China. Building on the 5% lower and upper bounds of TFRs, we further calculate the resulted population, with which to compare the actual population and get the corresponding reduced population. The lower and upper bounds of the reduced population serve as the 90% confidence interval of Synthetic China in terms of the population without 1973 policy shock. The corresponding reduction of the population associated with the 1973 policy is between 60 and 94 million.

As shown in Table 2 , the countries used to construct Synth China differed significantly between the 1973 and 1979 shocks. Before the 1973 shock, the greatest contribution was made by India (with a weight of 36.9%), a country that implemented a weaker family planning system and was characterized by high fertility throughout the 1970s [ 45 ]. Jordan, Thailand, Ireland, Egypt, and Korea came as the second to the sixth most comparable countries to China. All of them, except Ireland, had family planning policies. Jordan started family planning measures in the 1980s [ 46 ]; Thailand had done three rounds of family planning measures starting from 1963 to 1980 [ 47 ]; Egypt implemented three rounds of family planning measures in 1966, 1970, and 1979 [ 48 ]; and the family planning policy started in Korea in 1961 and lasted until the 1980s [ 49 ]. Even without any institutional background information, the synthetic control model has been able to select countries with family planning programs automatically.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220170.t002

In the period 1973 to 1979, Korea overtook India as the country that most resembled China (75.2%). While the GDP per capita was considerably different between these two countries in this period (even in the current period), in the 1980s, they shared similarities in terms of the other variables not included in the model, including the GDP growth rate and the presence of an authoritarian political regime [ 50 , 51 ]. Furthermore, the Korean family planning system was extraordinarily comprehensive and was founded on new social norms around family size, as well as the development of rural areas in general [ 52 ]. Thailand still played an important role with a contribution of 16% to Synth China.

Robustness check

We further carried out several robustness checks by including the add-on policy intervention or altering the data coverage.

We examined first the impact of the commonly acknowledged temporary relaxation of the one-child policy during the late 1980s until the beginning of 1990s by using 1991 as another intervention year (Table B and Fig A in S1 File ). No significant impact was found.

A second robustness check done was performed by extending the coverage of the dataset. The baseline dataset of 64 countries used in the analysis was constructed by excluding countries with any missing value for the input and output variables from 1955 to 2010. Therefore, there is a possibility that countries sharing great similarities with China were excluded because of unavailable GDP per capita data in 1955 and onwards. The GDP per capita data were obtained from PWT 9.0, which is mostly accepted as one of the most reliable and complete sources of GDP data, especially when comparison across countries is required. To examine whether such exclusions would alter our conclusion, we revised our data construction by relaxing the time coverage requirement and allowing an unbalanced dataset for each shock. That is, if the input variables of a country for the required years by the Synthetic Control Method were available, we included it in the dataset. For example, countries previously excluded from our baseline model because of missing data on GDP per capita from 1955 to 1964 were included for assessing the impact of 1973 shock, and the availability of the GDP per capita data was only required from 1965 to 1973. It resulted in a dataset containing 103 countries for the 1973 shock and 123 countries for the 1979 shock (Tables C and D in S1 File ). Consistent with our baseline results, there was a significant decline in the TFR associated with the 1973 shock but insignificant impact with the 1979 shock (Table E and Fig B in S1 File ).

The final main robustness check done is restricting the coverage of countries in the dataset. We selected 25 countries as a focus group that had been subjectively recognized by previous literature as having similar fertility behavior as China (Table F in S1 File ). The focus group dataset with available data consisted of 17 countries for the 1973 shock and 20 countries for the 1979 shock. India, Indonesia, and Thailand were selected for Synth China in evaluating the 1973 shock and Korea, and Thailand was selected for Synth China in evaluating the 1979 shock, which was fewer than in our baseline analysis (Table G in S1 File ). Interestingly, the permutation test showed that even for the 1973 shock, the gap between the TFR of Synth China and actual TFR is located within the 95% interval. This indicates the insignificant impact of the 1973 shock. However, since there were only 16 countries used to do the random draw for the 500 paths, the variation contained in the permutation test is very limited, which weakened the reliability of the test (Fig C in S1 File ). The lower bound of the 95% confidence interval was dominated by Korea. Korea experienced a much sharper decline in TFR in the 1970s. Excluding Korea, China had the largest gap in the TFR.

As a robustness check, we also replace the TFRs used in our analysis with the UN-provided interpolated annual TFRs. The result is consistent with our baseline findings (see Table H and Fig D in S1 File ).

Limitations and conclusions

Of course, our study has various limitations. Firstly, from a data perspective, it is arguable that the veracity evidence derived for China–and, indeed, reconstructed for other countries–over the past seven decades is to be open to interpretation. This potential challenge is acknowledged and would, indeed, affect any and all studies of Chinese population history. However, the main argument of the likely impact of these two shocks still holds. Secondly, by considering China as a national unit, we do not disaggregate and consider the impact of the interventions (and policy differentials) at the sub-national unit. For example, it may be that the 1979 intervention had a more significant impact in one province than in others, dependent on the social and economic conditions of that region, coupled with the particular ‘history’ of birth control policies there. By considering only the aggregate level, we lose this granularity. Such an exercise would be a fruitful future avenue of research. The final criticism is a more holistic one. Is the size, complexity, the political, and economic system of China so unique that it is possible to create a ‘synthetic China’ at all? For sure, China is ‘different’ to most, if not all, countries of the world. However, the principle of the synthetic control approach is simply to draw similarities from other places if and where they exist. In this way, such an approach is more systematic, transparent, and viable than simply drawing on a single country comparator or a basket of other regions. Indeed, it could be argued that all possible units of analysis (countries, regions, towns) are ‘unique’ in their own way.

In this paper, we used the synthetic control method to assess the impact of the "One-Child" policy in China. Our findings strongly suggest that had China followed a standard development trajectory combined with the continuation of its comprehensive population control policies introduced in 1973 (‘later-longer-fewer'), the decline in the TFR and hence total population size would have been similar under the conditions of the stricter one-child policy and its various reforms thereafter. While the policies implemented in 1973 were restrictive in terms of spacing, timing and the quantum total number of children, and were also stricter than almost any other contemporary family planning program, they were, undoubtedly, less restrictive than what followed.

The implications of this study are two-fold. Firstly, by suggesting that the impact of the birth control policies may have been exaggerated in the past, we can better understand why the response to their relaxation has been relatively muted–or, at least, well below popular expectation. Secondly: it is impossible to ignore the fact that the strict birth control policies introduced in 1979 brought with them numerous negative and possibly unforeseen consequences. As well as the sanctioned activities and corrupt abuses which occurred within the birth control policy framework, the policies have been linked to the highly skewed sex ratio [ 53 ], the presence of millions of shidu fumu families who have lost their only child [ 54 ] as well as other challenges in both the development of family systems and individual behavior. The long-term psychological consequences of prioritizing one-child families have yet to be fully explored, not least in the context of possible efforts to spur childbearing in the future.

In this context, our analysis suggests that the population control policies implemented from 1979 have no significant demographic effect compared to a looser operationalization of population control and economic development. An important lesson for other countries that are planning to introduce population controls: the stricter controls might not be the effective one.

Supporting information

S1 file. appendix..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220170.s001

S2 File. Program and data.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220170.s002

Acknowledgments

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The authors are responsible for any remaining errors in the paper.

The authors would like to thank Ma. Christina F. Epetia for her excellent research assistance.

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Population, Policy, and Politics: How Will History Judge China’s One-Child Policy?

Subscribe to the china bulletin, feng wang , feng wang former brookings expert, professor - sociology, university of california, irvine, professor - fudan university in shanghai yong cai , and yc yong cai baochang gu bg baochang gu.

February 25, 2013

Content from the Brookings-Tsinghua Public Policy Center is now archived . Since October 1, 2020, Brookings has maintained a limited partnership with Tsinghua University School of Public Policy and Management that is intended to facilitate jointly organized dialogues, meetings, and/or events.

One of the main puzzles of modern population and social history is why, among all countries confronting rapid population growth in the second half of the twentieth century, China chose to adopt an extreme measure of birth control known as the one-child policy. A related question is why such a policy, acknowledged to have many undesirable consequences, has been retained for so long, even beyond the period of time anticipated by its creators.

With the world’s population growth rate now at half its historical peak level and with nearly half of the world’s population living in countries with fertility below replacement level, we can look back at the role politics played in formulating, implementing, and reformulating policies aimed at slowing population growth (Demeny and McNicoll 2006; Robinson and Ross 2007; Demeny 2011). In this context, an examination of China’s unprecedented government intervention in reproduction offers valuable lessons in appreciating the role of politics in the global effort of birth control in the twentieth century.

Aside from the rise and fall of Communism, family planning programs along with the Green Revolution could be considered two of the most consequential social experiments of the twentieth century. These two experiments differ, however, in both content and approach. The Green Revolution was aimed at feeding the population, while family planning programs were designed to curtail its growth. The Green Revolution was technological, economic, and global, while family planning programs were social, political, and often country specific.

Nowhere in the world did politics and policies figure more prominently in the effort to control population growth than in China. The policy of allowing all couples to have only one child finds no equal in the world and it may be one of the most draconian examples of government social engineering ever seen. In this essay, we cast China’s one-child policy in the changing global context of population policymaking, we revisit the supposed necessity of such a policy by examining the claim that the policy was responsible for preventing 400 million births, and we discuss the reasons such a policy, with all its known negative consequences, has been allowed to stay in place for more than thirty years since its inception.

Editor’s Note: this paper first appeared in Population and Development Review , published by the Population Council.

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Foreign Policy Global Economy and Development

John L. Thornton China Center

Kerllen Costa

March 28, 2024

Camille Busette, Keon L. Gilbert, Gabriel R. Sanchez, Kwadwo Frimpong, Carly Bennett

Morley Winograd, Michael Hais

One-Child Policy and Its Influence on China Essay

Introduction, background and concept of one-child policy, the effects of china’s one-child policy, populace growth, the sex ratio, rights to life, proportion of old age dependency, the future of the policy, works cited.

China’s one-tyke family strategy has affected the lives of almost a fourth of the world’s populace. The Chinese government guaranteed that it was a transient measure to move toward a little intentional family culture. Thus, we will analyze the influence of China’s one-tyke policy, its accomplishment, and recommendations. This paper will discuss why the approach was presented and how it is actualized. We will analyze the results of the arrangement about populace development, the proportion amongst men and women, and the proportion between grown-up kids and elderly guardians. Finally, we will examine the significance of the strategy in contemporary China. As China rose out of the social interruptions and monetary stagnation of the Cultural Revolution, its government dispatched market changes to revive the economy. In 1979, perceiving that populace control was vital to raise expectations for everyday comforts, the one-tyke family approach was presented (Kang and Wang 91). The one-child policy has exposed the challenges of human freedom. It is morally unsuitable to take a human life, be it by homicide, capital punishment, or premature birth. Numerous social orders acknowledged premature birth to safeguard the mental and social prosperity of the mother.

This strategy restricts family estimate, empowers a late marriage, childbearing, and the dividing of kids when second kids are allowed. Family spacing panel at neighborhood levels created immediate techniques to support the policy. However, the one-tyke principle applies to urban inhabitants and government workers (Hao 171). In rustic zones, a second child is permitted following five years, if the first is a woman. A third kid is authorized in some ethnic minorities and in remote, under-populated regions. Financial motivations for consistence, significant fines, seizure of property and loss of employment, were utilized to authorize the approach. The strategy depends on general access to contraception and premature birth. By implication, Eighty-seven for each penny of wedded women used contraception. Most women acknowledged the technique suggested by the family physician, which supported one-child policy (Hao 172). Dependence on long haul contraception kept the premature birth rate low (25 for every penny of Chinese ladies of regenerative age have had no less than one fetus removal, as contrasted 43 for each penny in the United States). Premature births are authorized when contraceptives are ineffective or when the pregnancy is not affirmed. However, Unattended and unsanctioned conveyances do happen.

In 1979, the Chinese government left with an aspiring system of business change taking after the financial stagnation of the Cultural Revolution. Sixty-six percent of the populace was under the age of 30 years, and the children of postwar America of the 1950s and 1960s were entering their regenerative years. The administration saw strict populace control as key to monetary change and a change in living standards. As a result, the Chinese government presented the one-kid family arrangement. The strategy comprises of an arrangement of directions administering the affirmed size of Chinese families. These controls incorporate limitations on family measure, late marriage, and childbearing, and the separating of kids (where second kids are allowed). Family-arranging advisory groups as common and regional levels devise immediate systems for execution. Despite its name, the one-kid principle applies to a minority of the populace; for urban occupants and government workers, the arrangement are upheld, with a couple of exemptions (Festini and de Martino 360). Special cases incorporate families in which the main kid has an inability or both guardians work in high-hazard occupations, (for example, mining) or are themselves from one-youngster families (in a few zones). In areas where 70 percent of the general population lives, a second child permitted following five years, yet this arrangement occasionally applies if the main youngster is a woman (an unmistakable affirmation of the conventional inclination for boys). The influence of China’s one-tyke policy affected the sex ratio and population growth. However, the policy increased abortion to astronomical heights.

The one-child policy is a standout amongst the most critical social approaches ever executed in China. The approach, set up in 1979, restricted couples to just having one tyke. The policy was influenced by China’s amazingly vast populace development, which was seen as a danger to the nation’s future monetary development and expectations for everyday comforts of the general population (Festini and de Martino 359). At the season of being actualized, China’s populace was around 970 million (Festini and de Martino 360), thus, it was the Chinese government’s objective to enforce populace development to keep the aggregate populace focused around 1.2 billion for the year 2000 (Hao 170). China’s aggregate populace was around 1.26 billion in 2000 (Hu 5), so the objective was accomplished, yet maybe was marginally higher than what the legislature estimated. For the arrangement to be effectively executed, the administration presented motivating forces so that the populace would follow the directions.

These impetuses have been monetary, including duties and fines for the individuals who do not go with the policy. For instance, families have favored access to lodging, social insurance and instruction (Festini and de Martino 368). There have been both positive and negative effects connected with the one-tyke policy in China. It has been effective in avoiding between 250 million and 300 million births (Festini and de Martino 370), and in addition, diminishing the aggregate ripeness rate (TFR) from 2.7 youngsters for every woman in 1980 to 1.7 in 2011 (Festini and de Martino 369). This figure in TFR has prompted the diminishing of the aggregate populace of China accordingly dodging a populace blast, keeping up monetary development, and enhancing expectation of everyday comforts. Nonetheless, there are worries that the current TFR that is underneath the substitution level of 2.1 may bring a different demographic circumstance. This low TFR may decrease to lower level, potentially prompting a populace decrease that supports ‘minimal low’ richness (TFR of 1.3 or beneath). By implication, there will be an absence of individuals in the working age populace and the prospect of a maturing populace (Kang and Wang 91). This would influence the reliance proportion of the nation and put gigantic weight on the administration to give monetary and social backing to the elderly populace.

A standout amongst the impacts of the one child policy has been China’s sex proportion and the “missing young ladies” marvel. China has encountered a skewed sex proportion for quite a while, before tyke policy was presented. This issue has been exacerbated subsequent to the presentation of the approach. In China, having male kids is favored over girls. This inclination is particularly present in rustic territories because male children are in charge of supporting relatives once they have achieved maturity. As a result, the child inclination has prompted an expanded skew in the sex proportion during childbirth. Prior to the strategy in 1979, the sex proportion was 115 boys per 96 girls marginally higher than the world sex proportion of 109 boys per 90 females. The amazingly skewed sex proportion in China has prompted the “missing young ladies” wonder, which means many young women are “lost” from China’s populace registers. There are four fundamental clarifications for this: female child murder, disregard, or relinquishment; underreporting of female births; reception of female kids; and sex-particular premature births (Riley 34). Abortion, which is the primary driver of China’s sex proportion, was an aftereffect of the policy. Through the presentation of ultrasound machines in the mid-1980s, Chinese couples could illicitly discover the sex of their tyke and after that could complete a fetus removal if their first kid was a female, making it workable for them to have a child (Kaiman14).

Lately, there have been arrangements with the Chinese government to unwind the policy. Notwithstanding, there is levelheaded discussion whether this will make a populace blast inside China. The monetary weight of having a kid has deflected numerous couples from having a second tyke; subsequently this unwinding of the arrangement might not affect the populace development of China. Consequently, numerous couples from provincial regions will probably have a second tyke as they depend more on their sons to bolster the family. There could even be a plausibility of the policy being suspended by 2020 (Kaiman14), however this will rely on upon future demographic patterns and if the legislature will surrender one of the greatest strategies ever presented in China.

At the point when the one-youngster approach was presented, the administration set an objective populace of 1.2 billion by the year 2000 (Kaiman16). The census count of 2000 puts the populace at 1.27 billion. The strategy itself influenced the diminishing in the ripeness rate. The most sensational abatement, in the rate really happened before the arrangement was enforced. Different interpretations have been advanced to clarify why 118 young men are conceived for every 101 young women conceived with sex-particular fetus removal picking up the amplest acknowledgment. Indeed, even in other Asian nations without populace control projects, for example, South Korea and Taiwan, the solid social inclination for children joined the entrance to cut edge innovations, for example, ultrasound has brought about expanded male sex proportions during childbirth. In the United States, some Chinese outsiders utilized sex fetus removal to sustain the male child ratio. Sex-selection birth includes couples picking premature birth if the embryo is observed to be a female tyke. In June of 2006, the Chinese governing body declined to case, sex-selection premature births a wrongdoing, though abortion is illegal. Since sex-premature births abuse, family control strategy, the legislature has guaranteed to rebuff the policy (Kaiman 4).

The social weight applied by the one-kid strategy has influenced the rate at which guardians surrender undesirable youngsters in state-supported housing, from which thousands are embraced both universally and by Chinese guardians. The guardians offered them up for formal or casual selection. A greater part of youngsters who experienced formal selection in China in the late 1980’s was young women, which has increased in the recent survey. The acts of receiving undesirable young women are steady with both the child inclination of numerous Chinese couples.

The impact of the strategy on the sex proportion has gotten much consideration. The sex proportion during childbirth, characterized as the extent of male births to female ranged from 1.03 to 1.07 in industrialized countries. There has been an enduring increment in the reported sex proportion, from 1.08 in 1979, 1.12 in 1988, to 1.19 in 2001. Thus, the policy supported sex-selection ratios in China (Hesketh and Xing 1172). By implication, parents abort a female fetus, which they consider a liability to family stability. This assumption has been widely criticized by human rights institutions (Hesketh and Xing 1173). What transpires the missing young women involves hypothesis. Sex-fetus removal after ultrasonography without a doubt represents a decrease in female births. Actual figures are difficult to get, because sex-premature birth is illicit and not documented (Hesketh and Xing 1171). Consequently, non-registration of female birth adds to the sex-proportion gap. A survey completed in three areas found a typical sex proportion in the under-14 age bunch, with the genuine number of young women surpassing the number enlisted by 22 percent (Hesketh and Xing 1173). Although child murders of young women are extremely uncommon now, fewer treatments of female newborn are uncommon.

Numerous human rights institutions have scrutinized the “One-Child Policy”. They considered the one-youngster approach is against the human right of proliferation. Reactions mostly concentrate on the very conceivable social issues, for example, the “One-Two-Four” issue, while perceiving the significance of having such an approach for the nation. Identified with this feedback are sure the side-outcomes that are ascribed to the one-kid strategy, including the utilization of sex-selection birth. Birth proponents argue that the one-tyke strategy is an infringement of human rights. Consequently, practices purportedly used to actualize this arrangement are illegal. China has been blamed for meeting its populace prerequisites through the gift, intimidation, constrained disinfection, constrained premature birth, and child murder, with most reports originated from rustic zones (Hesketh and Xing 1173). An online report revealed that in 2005, share of 20,000 constrained premature births in Guangdong province was set because of the reported carelessness of the one-tyke approach (Hesketh and Xing 1175). The exertion included utilizing compact ultrasound gadgets to find premature birth applicants. The report stated that women as far along as 8.5 months pregnant were compelled to prematurely end by infusion of saline arrangement into the womb. Because of the procedure, the mother is exposed to extraordinary mental and physical torment. Thus, utilization of constrained disinfection and controlled birth is in disagreement with formally expressed approaches and perspective on China as indicated by government authorities (Susan 165).

It is obscure how regular child murder is in China, however, government authorities say that it is uncommon. There are stories of guardians executing their female newborn in remote and country regions for various reasons. Beside evasion of the punishments and confinements of the state prevention arrangement, the main drivers of child murder, particularly for infant, girls, would be needed in rural China alongside the customary inclination for boys. Thus, the Chinese government has recognized the unfortunate social outcomes of this sex lopsidedness. The deficiency of girls has expanded mental issues and social conduct among men. Although the one-kid arrangement has been reprimanded for the high sex proportion, it is one contributory variable. There was a high sex proportion in China in the 1930s and 1940s, because of child murder of girls, and afterward the proportion declined in the years after the Communist Revolution of 1949. However, sex-fetus removal would proceed at a lower rate without the one-child policy.

The quick abatement in the birth rate, joined steady or enhance future, has prompted an expanding extent of elderly individuals and an increment in the proportion between elderly guardians and grown-up children. The rate of the populace beyond 65 is at par with adolescents. Although these figures are lower than those in industrialized regions are, the absence of sufficient annuity scope in China implies that money related reliance on posterity is still fundamental for 65 percent of elderly people. Pension scope is accessible to those utilized in the administration part and extensive organizations. This issue has been named the “four-to-one” wonder, implying that expanding quantities of couples will be in charge of the consideration of one youngster and four guardians. Activities are under an approach to enhance access to government benefits for private annuities trying to diminish the weight of the 4:2:1 phenomenon.

The Chinese government is confronting a critical test: the need to adjust the human right of proliferation with populace development. Thus, the unwinding strategy must be tailored to align with the rights to life. There is presently great proof that China is turning into a little family culture. Thus, government institutions must abolish the policy to avoid workforce shortage. Perceiving that ultrasonography encourages sex premature birth, non-administrative associations effectively campaigned to sanction the law. Improving the financial and social estimation of women will require creative projects. Enhanced instruction and pay employment offer in parental property will add to the improved status of women.

Indeed, even the tyrant legislature of China must make concessions to the social male inclination in permitting most of its populace to the second tyke when the first is a young woman. Along these lines, while sex determination is illicit in China, a high extent of kids (particularly the second youngster) is young men demonstrating that the prohibition on fetus removal is not extremely successful. Consequently, the Chinese government has declared “particular strategies for young women in medical services, training, and income. We have seen from China’s case that laws influencing societal states of mind are hard to uphold. In India, the two-tyke strategy has been implemented by denying employments to those with more than two kids. The punishments have influenced primarily those from the lower position and class while the upper ranks and classes have the capacity to maintain a strategic distance (Barry 122).

The one-child policy has exposed the challenges of human freedom. It is morally unsuitable to take a human life, be it by homicide, capital punishment, or premature birth. Numerous social orders acknowledged premature birth to safeguard the mental and social prosperity of the mother. Women activists have battled long and difficult to make fetus removal lawful and effectively accessible to women. By implication, women must have the supreme right to life (Barry 134). The monstrous movement to urban zones could clear much of the ills ascribed to sexual irregularity in China (Hu 6). A few guardians may over-enjoy their exclusive tyke creating adolesenct issues.. Since the 1990s, a few people have stressed that this will bring about a higher propensity toward poor social correspondence and participation abilities among children. However, no social studies have researched the proportion of these over-reveled kids and to what degree they are reveled. With the original of youngsters conceived under the strategy, achieving adulthood, such stresses are reduced.

Barry, Naughton. The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth , Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2007. Print.

Festini, Filippo, and de Martino, Matiq. “Twenty Five Years of the One Child Family Policy in China.” Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 58.1 (2004): 358-373. Print.

Hao, Yuri. “China’s 1.2 Billion Target for the Year 2000: ‘Within’ or ‘Beyond’?” The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 19.20 (1988): 165-183.

Hesketh, Therese, and Xing, Zhu. “The Effect of China’s One-Child Family Policy After 25 Years.” The New England Journal of Medicine 353.11 (2005): 1171-1176.

Hu, Huiting 2002, Family Planning Law and China’s Birth Control Situation . Web.

Kaiman, Jonathan 2013, China’s One-Child Policy to be Relaxed as Part of Reforms Package The Guardian . Web.

Kaiman, Jonathan, 2014 Time Running Out for China’s One-Child Policy after Three Decades the Guardian . Web.

Kang, Cun, and Wang, Yuri 2003, “Sex Ratio at Birth In: Theses Collection of 2001.” National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Survey 23.1 (2003): 88-98.Print.

Riley, Nancy. “China’s Population: New Trends and Challenges.” Population Journal 60.2 (2004): 14-45.

Susan, Greenhalgh. “Science, Modernity, and the Making of China’s One-Child Policy.” Population and Development Review 29.1 (2003): 163-196. Print.

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China’s One Child Policy and Its Effect on Economy, Family, and Society

Possible solutions.

China is considered to be one of the most populated countries in the world. Moreover, the country has been holding the world’s leading position in this field for a long time. Therefore, the issue of Chinese demographic policy is one of the most important. The problems that are associated with the size of the population are especially acute in this country. In fact, at this stage of economic and demographic development, it is impossible to raise living standards without solving these issues.

In recent years, there have been numerous heated discussions among the expert community and in the Chinese media about the apparent need of revising the “one family – one child” policy. In addition, researchers also discuss the possible consequences for the country’s development in connection with the abolition of strict birth control. Economists and demographers expressed particular concerns about the consequences of this policy, which has lasted for almost forty years. According to researchers, “the policies have a far-reaching impact on population size, fertility rate, sex ratio, age structure, family size” (Wang, 2017, p. 21). As a result, China has decided to change its demographic policy and allow each married couple to have two children.

First of all, before discussing the consequences, it is important to review the history of that rule. The Chinese government was forced to legally limit family size in the 1970s when it became clear that vast numbers of people were overwhelming the country’s land, water, and energy resources. This demographic policy was called “one family – one child,” or just “one child,” policy. The Chinese leadership associated the fulfillment of socio-economic and political tasks with limiting the growth of a huge population because taking care of such a big population was difficult. In order to limit population growth, the country began to implement new family-planning rules from the mid-1960s with an ever-increasing tightening of it.

At the beginning, the authorities allowed families to have three children. Then, after a few years, parents were offered to have no more than two children, and, from the beginning of the 1980s, they began to consider an exemplary family with one child. City streets were replete with slogans which declared that having an only child is better for the family. Children in big cities, where this policy was carried out most successfully, were dressed in good clothes and surrounded by attention and care. Families with one child also received benefits, such as the right to priority housing, free maintenance for a child in a kindergarten, advantages in admission to universities, and more.

Families in rural areas with one child were allowed to increase the size of the allocated household land. For parents with two or more children, a number of different restrictions were implemented in a number of areas. For example, after the birth of a second child, parents were required to return the bonus that was paid to them monthly as a family with one child. In addition, they were forced to pay a fine, the amount of which depended on income and residences ranged from a few hundred to several thousand Yuan. The following figure how the fertility rate changed during those years.

Among the unusual family planning measures was the promotion of late marriage. Officially, the age of marriage for women was 20 years, for men it was 22 years. However, additional restrictions were introduced by the government; for example, it was strictly forbidden to create a family for students up to the threat of expelling from the institute. Nevertheless, in matters of marriage, China has gradually become an increasingly modern country. For thousands of years marriages in China were concluded by agreement between parents. Divorces ceased to be a rarity, but their share was significantly lower than in Western countries since divorce is considered a shame for the Chinese people. It should also be noted that the slogan “One family – one child” was carried out the country while taking into account local conditions and national characteristics. Thus, in areas inhabited by national minorities, the number of children could not be limited.

Nevertheless, this policy has a number of negative consequences regarding family matters. The imbalance in the sex ratio forms is one of those negative social phenomena. The following graph demonstrates how the balance between the male and female population significantly increased due to this rule. The reason for such disparity is that it was more convenient to have a male child, rather than to have a female child. Such belief was particularly popular due to sexism in the Chinese community. Parents were convinced that a son is more likely to take care of them when they will grow old, while a daughter will be taking care of her own family. For this reason, most of female fetuses were aborted, which lead to an imbalanced sex ratio.

The reason for this is that such disparity contributes to the growth of the illegal market for sexual services, women and children trafficking, and the spread of AIDS. This demographic imbalance seriously damages the psychological health of young men, condemns them to search for brides in neighboring states (). Moreover, it generates a number of different mental problems connected with insecurity, stress, and suicidal moods, which can also lead to an increase in sexual crimes.

In Chinese society, a large number of single young men who came from families as an only child has formed a group that, for objective reasons, has limited opportunities to satisfy their need for a family. In addition, they also cannot satisfy the basic needs of the individual for love and belonging. The inability to satisfy these needs, as a rule, leads to maladjustment, aggressiveness, and unpredictability of social behavior. All of these trends create conditions for social destabilization and pose a certain threat to social security.

Furthermore, this policy also created changes in financial condition of families. On the one hand, it became easier for families to support their children. According to researchers, “singleton children received more financial investment in their education than their non-singleton counterparts; and parents spent less time supervising girls’ academic work in the presence of male siblings” (Hu & Shi, 2020, p. 381). However, under current conditions, every single child in a Chinese family is still forced to support their parents and two pairs of paternal and maternal grandparents. This is objectively an extraordinary burden for an individual who builds their own life and marriage in difficult economic conditions.

This also creates an apparent problem because for one adult, it would be difficult to support not only his own wife and children, but both parents as well. From this issue, a need for changes in policies regarding government support arises. The legislative consolidation of the obligations of adult children to their parents testifies to the urgency of the problems of financial help, as well as psychological support for elderly citizens. The disregard of this problem can lead to the increase of disrespectful and cruel treatment of elderly relatives.

In less than 40 years, as a result of effective birth control in China, an accelerated demographic transition from the traditional model of population reproduction took place. From high fertility and mortality rates, it was changed to a modern model characterized by low fertility and mortality, low population growth. In addition, the changes occurred regarding the structure of the population in favor of older age groups and a gradual reduction in the share of the working-age population.

At first, the birth control policy and the resulting drop in the demographic burden have contributed greatly to China’s rapid economic growth. There are a number of reasons for these positive changes, however, they were short-lived. The labor market was filled with young women who were no longer busy giving birth and raising children. The maintenance of a single-child family required less funds than a family with many children. Therefore, the requirements for higher wages were not aggravated, and labor remained cheap. The state freed itself from the obligation to take care of the education and employment of the second and subsequent children. As a result, it became possible to increase the share of savings and investment. In the early 2010s, the demographic burden reached its minimum, and the growth in the proportion of the elderly in China’s population

has already begun. The following figure demonstrates how labor forces were distributed among the population.

The previous graph demonstrates how the working age was transformed due to the one-child policy. This result was produced by the researchers’ own calculation “based on the 1982 Population Census and mini-census in 2005 of China” (Wang et al., 2017, p. 52). From this outcome, one can see that a significant amount of old people works in agriculture in recent years. Wang (2017) also indicated that “labor markets may encounter a shortage in the labor force if the industrial structure fails to transform properly” (p. 64). In addition to this alarming trend, there is also a steady increase in the population of people over 60 years old.

There is no doubt that this increase is also becoming a problem for the government for several reasons. The rapidly aging society expects from the state the creation of specialized services focused on the specific needs of this age group. In addition, the elderly also need the development and implementation of new technologies of social support. Researchers note that the “significantly accelerated the advent of an aging society, radically altered the structure of the population, and made eldercare a more challenging task” (Nie, 2016, p. 364). Aging also affects the standard of living of older people, which leads to an increase in the number of the poor.

The sharp decline in living standards after 60 is associated with a drop in income due to retirement status. As was stated above, one-child policy also restricts the opportunities for the elderly to get support by their children. As researchers state, “such policy exogenously reduces the availability of talented heirs, which in turn greatly lowers within-family successions and results in discontinuity of family firms since most family firms rely on within-family succession” (Cao et al., 2015, p. 328). Speaking about solving the problem of population aging in China, it should be emphasized that a significant part of the research and discussion on this issue is focused on the material aspects faced by older people. It includes the level and equity of retirement allowance, the cost and availability of medical and nursing services, financial support that should be provided to them by the state, and adult children. Much less attention is paid to the low quality of their life, the problem of emotional and social assistance faced by representatives of older age groups.

The problem of providing a high-quality, prosperous living conditions for the older age groups must be addressed in a comprehensive manner. The government has already rejected the one-child policy; however, its consequences will still be present for several decades. Therefore, China’s traditional family care system for the elderly should eventually be replaced by social insurance for old age, as well as family care and community-based, charitable, and commercial services. The creation of such an innovative model is in the interests of both the population and the state. The reason for this is that it meets the needs of older people and contributes to the preservation of social stability and the creation of a harmonious society.

Due to the decision to implement a one-child policy, there is still a number of negative trends in the structure of China’s population. For this reason, changes in this rule policy is considered to be timely and vital. As a result of the implementation of new attitudes in family planning in the long term, the size of the working-age population will stabilize, and the aging rate will slow down. Moreover, the age and sex structure of the Chinese population will also improve and be more equal. The adjustment of family planning policy will certainly play a positive role in putting the Chinese economy towards more productive development. It will also create objective grounds for reducing its traditionally high savings rate and stimulating the growth of markets for goods and services. All these interventions will have a positive impact on the Chinese economy and give a new impulse to its growth in the long term.

The Chinese experience of family planning and solving the problem of aging of the population is an important contribution to the research about the demographic situation in the world. For this reason, it is of particular interest for the leaders of developing countries, where the problem of improving the quality of life of older people does not lose its relevance. The socio-economic development of such a populated country as China can give rise to new problems and contradictions that are difficult to predict at this stage. That is why the demographic situation and the acute social problems associated with it, the successes and failures of the Chinese leadership require constant monitoring and a scientific analysis.

Cao, J., Cumming, D., & Wang, X. (2015). One-child policy and family firms in China. Journal of Corporate Finance , 33 , 317-329. 

Hu, Y., & Shi, X. (2020). The impact of China’s one-child policy on intergenerational and gender relations. Contemporary Social Science , 15 (3), 360-377. 

Loh, C., & Remick, E. J. (2015). China’s skewed sex ratio and the one-child policy . The China Quarterly , 222 , 295-319. 

Nie, J. B. (2016). Erosion of eldercare in China: A socio-ethical inquiry in aging, elderly suicide and the government’s responsibilities in the context of the one-child policy. Ageing International , 41 (4), 350-365. 

Wang, F., Zhao, L., & Zhao, Z. (2017). China’s family planning policies and their labor market consequences. Journal of Population Economics , 30 (1), 31-68. 

Whyte, M. K., Feng, W., & Cai, Y. (2015). Challenging myths about China’s one-child policy. The China Journal , (74), 144-159. 

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The Accidental Tax Cutter in Chief

President biden says he wants to rake in more money from corporations and high earners. but so far, he has cut more taxes than he’s raised..

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.

From “The New York Times,” I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.”

[THEME MUSIC]

Today, in his campaign for re-election, President Biden says that raising taxes is at the heart of his agenda. But as it turns out so far, he’s done the opposite as president. My colleague Jim Tankersley explains.

It’s Wednesday, April 3.

Jim, welcome back. We haven’t seen you since the State of the Union. Always a pleasure.

So, so great to be here. And yeah, I finally recovered from staying up all night with you guys.

Yeah, you don’t even know all night. You stopped and we kept going.

That’s true. I did. I got a robust three hours that night. You’re right.

[LAUGHS]:: So Jim, in your capacity as really the chief economic thinker covering this president, you recently came across something very surprising.

Yeah, it started with a pretty basic question for me. I like to do this crazy thing, Michael, where I like to take candidates’ promises and see if they’ve come true.

It’s a little bit wild, but it’s what I do for fun. And in this case, I wanted to look at a very central promise of President Biden’s campaign in 2020, which he has repeated while in office.

I promise you, I guarantee you we can build back, and build back better with an economy that rewards work, not wealth.

The promise was he was going to raise taxes.

But I tell you what I’m going to do, and I make no apologies for it. I’m going to ask the wealthiest Americans and the biggest corporations of the Fortune 500 companies, 91 making a collective billions of dollars, didn’t pay a single solitary penny in federal tax!

Not taxes on the middle class, not taxes on low income workers, but he was going to raise taxes on corporations and the rich.

But I’m going to make sure they pay their fair share!

He was going to make them pay their fair share. And he leaned into it.

Guess what? You’re going to start paying your fair share. I’m going to ask them to finally begin to pay the fair share. It’s not a punishment. Pay your fair share.

He said it over and over.

Fair share? Translation — it’s back to the failed policies of the 1970s.

Republicans loved this. They repeated it too. They told voters that the president was going to raise taxes.

Joe Biden bragging about raising taxes on corporations. That means less money for those very employers to hire people back.

They talked about all the ways in which corporate tax increases could rebound on workers.

Joe Biden will shut down your economy, raise taxes, wants a $4 trillion tax increase. He’s the only politician I’ve ever seen who said, we will raise your taxes. You’re supposed —

It was a very big part of the economic debate for the campaign.

And I wanted to know, is that true? Has that actually played out in the policy agenda the president has had?

So I asked some economists at the Tax Policy Center in Washington to run an analysis and just say, let’s look at all of the ways Biden has changed the tax code in all of those laws he’s signed, and ask, has he raised taxes as president? And it turns out the answer is he has not raised taxes.

On net, he has cut more taxes than he’s raised.

How much more has he cut taxes than raised them?

So by the math that economists use when they look at budgets, the traditional way of scoring tax changes, he has cut taxes by $600 billion on net.

Hmm. A lot of money, a lot of tax cuts.

It’s a lot of tax cuts. The president has been a net tax cutter.

So Jim, why and how did Biden end up cutting taxes, especially if his stated intent was to raise taxes?

Well, there’s two sides of this equation and two complementary explanations for what’s happened here. The first side is the tax increases that Biden ran on, he’s only done a couple of them. He has trillions of dollars of ideas for how to raise taxes on rich people and corporations. The Treasury Department publishes an entire book full of them every year called “The Green Book.”

But in the actual legislation he signed, there’s only been a couple, really. There was a tax on stock buybacks that companies do and then a new minimum tax for certain multinational corporations that have very low tax rates. Those add up to real money, but they are not, in the grand scheme of Biden’s tax increases, a really large amount of the agenda he’s proposed.

So explanation number one, he just hasn’t been that successful in passing tax increases, and there’s a lot of reasons for that. The biggest one is just the simplest one is that he’s just had a really hard time persuading members of Congress, including Democrats, to back some of his favorite tax increases. He wants to raise the corporate income tax rate, which President Trump cut in his 2017 tax bill. Biden wants to raise it to 28 percent from 21 percent. Congress has not had any appetite to go along with that.

He wanted to get rid of what’s called the carried interest loophole, a long-time white whale of Democratic policy making. But he could not get even 50 Democrats to go along with that. Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona was opposed to it, and so it didn’t get included.

And he did some pieces of legislation on a bipartisan basis. And in those cases, Republicans were just not going to pay for anything by raising taxes, and so he had to take those off the table there. So it’s all added up to just not very much activity in Congress to raise taxes on what Biden wants to do.

Got it. So that’s the side of a ledger where Biden simply fails to increase taxes because he can’t get Congress to increase taxes.

Right. But there’s another side, which is also that Biden has signed into law a decent number of tax cuts.

And that starts from the very beginning. Just a couple of months into his presidency, if you’ll recall, we’re still in the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, the economy is wobbling after it had started to rebound. Biden proposes what is essentially a stimulus bill.

And he includes some tax cuts in there, a tax cut for families, a child tax credit. And it also includes — you remember those direct checks that people got as part of that bill?

Yes, $1,400. I remember them.

Yes, those were technically tax cuts.

So the stimulus bill starts with that. The next year, he passes this bill that is trying to accelerate manufacturing of things like semiconductors in the United States. That’s the CHIPS Act. And that includes some corporate tax cuts for companies that invest in the kind of manufacturing that Biden wants. This is industrial policy via carrots for corporations. And Biden is handing them out as part of this bill.

So tax cuts there. And then finally the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes the largest climate effort in American history is a bunch of corporate tax cuts at its core, tax cuts for manufacturing of solar panels, tax cuts for people to buy electric vehicles, tax cuts for all sorts of things tied to the transition from fossil fuels to lower emission sources of energy. And those tax cuts add up. They add up for corporations. They add up for individuals. And in the end, that full suite of tax cuts that he’s passed across all of this legislation outweighs the modest tax increases that were also included in the Inflation Reduction Act to reduce its cost.

Got it. So a very big reason why Biden ends up cutting taxes, beyond the fact that he’s not able to raise them through Congress, is that that’s what it took, according to those in his administration, to get American industry and American consumers to change their behavior in line with policy goals such as getting more domestic computer chip manufacturing and getting more people to buy electric vehicles they decided the way to do that was to give people tax breaks, which means he cut their taxes.

Right, people and companies. The president certainly has talked throughout the campaign about wanting to give middle class families a break. But he has also, in the process of crafting policy, really come to rely on tax cuts for people and for corporations as a way of achieving these policy goals. And in many cases, again, this is what he had to do to pass these bills through even Democrats in Congress.

Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia didn’t want to just send money to companies that were making solar panels. He wanted there to be tax incentives for it. And so that is part of the reason why these were created as tax incentives. And so all of this adds up to more of a tax cutting record than you might have imagined when Biden was on the campaign trail.

I’m curious who really ended up benefiting from these tax cuts. You said they went to people and to corporations, but on the whole, did they end up reaching lower income Americans, middle income Americans, or the rich?

Well, we don’t have a full distributional analysis, which is what you’re asking for, of the entirety of Biden’s tax changes. But what we can say this — particularly the ones that were in that early stimulus bill, the recovery plan, those were very much targeted toward lower income and middle income Americans.

There were income limits on who could get things like the Child Tax Credit. Obviously, the direct payments went to people who were middle class or less. So the analysis of that would suggest that these were tax cuts for lower income people, for middle class people. And on the flip side, what I think we are likely to see with the electric vehicle credit through the Inflation Reduction Act is that while there are some income limits on who can qualify for that credit, that the people who end up claiming that credit tend to be the higher earners among the people who qualify.

Right. Who buys a Tesla, after all? Somebody with a fair amount of money.

Right, exactly. And of course, the corporate tax cuts go to companies, flow through to their shareholders. There’s a huge debate in the academic literature among politicians about how much of that benefit actually ends up going to their workers versus stays with shareholders. But we can broadly say that Joe Biden has done a lot for certain corporations who are trying to advance his manufacturing goals in particular to reduce their tax bills. And that is certainly not in line with the rhetoric you hear him talking about most of the time about making corporations pay their fair share. And the White House acknowledges this. I asked them about it. And they basically said, we think there’s a difference between just cutting the corporate tax rate in a way that helps anybody no matter what they’re doing and what we’re trying to do, which is basically reward corporations for accelerating the energy transition.

Understood. But where does this ultimately leave Biden’s campaign promise to make the tax code fairer and to make sure that the well-off in particular and corporations are paying their, what he calls, fair share?

Well, I think by Biden’s own measurements, by his own ambitions, he would have to agree that he is nowhere close to what he believes would be a fair share for corporations. Because Biden is still running on this. As he enters his re-election campaign, as it really heats up, a rematch with Donald Trump, the president is really leaning into this message of we need to do more. We need to raise more taxes on corporate America. It is time for these companies and for high earners to pay their fair share.

Right. I didn’t get it done in the first term. But if you elect me, I’ll get it done in the second.

Give me another shot, and this time, I promise, will be different.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

We’ll be right back.

So Jim, let’s talk about Biden’s tax raising plans for a theoretical second term and why anyone should have any faith that he could get it done, if there’s a second term, given the experience so far of his first term.

Yeah, well, man, there’s a lot of plans to talk about. I don’t think we can get through all of them, but we can certainly hit the highlights here. So we can start with the couple of things that Biden has been able to do to raise taxes on corporations. He wants to take those and then plus them up.

He’s put this new minimum tax on corporations. It’s a 15 percent minimum tax on certain multinationals. He now wants to raise that to 21 percent.

He wants to take that corporate stock buyback tax which is 1 percent right now, and he’d like to quadruple it to 4 percent. And then he goes after some things large and small. He wants to do new taxes that hit the use of corporate and private jets. He wants to do new taxes on companies that pay large amounts of compensation to their executives.

And then we get to some really big taxes on high earning individuals. So the president has said over and over again, he won’t raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 a year. But he’s got a bunch of taxes for the people above that. So he wants to raise the top marginal income tax rate. He wants to take it from 37 percent, which is the level set by President Trump’s 2017 tax law, and bring it back to 39.6 percent, which is what it was before. He also wants to impose what he calls a billionaires tax.

OK. It’s a 25 percent tax on the total value of all of the assets of anyone worth more than $100 million.

OK, wait. I have several questions about this.

First being a fact check, if it’s a billionaires tax, it’s interesting that it’s going after people who have just 100 million.

Yeah, I think most billionaires would be offended at the inclusion of 100 millionaires in that. Yes, totally agree. That is factually inaccurate, the name.

Right. But beyond that, this sounds very much like a wealth tax, which we don’t really have in our system.

Yeah, it’s a sort of wealth tax. The Biden people don’t call it a wealth tax, but it is a tax on something other than income that you report every year to the IRS as having been earned. It goes beyond just, oh, I got interest from my stock holdings or I made money from my job. It’s, oh, the value of my art collection increased last year, and now Biden’s going to tax me on that increase, even if I didn’t sell the art.

That’s a real change, and that reflects the president’s view that people with enough money to buy enormous art collections that appreciate enormously in value should be paying more in taxes.

Right. And of course, a tax like this is extremely perhaps maddeningly hard to actually pull off. It’s hard to get someone to describe their art collection’s value so that you can apply a 25 tax to it. So this might end up being more of a political statement than a practical tax.

Yeah, there’s also questions about whether it’s constitutional. So there’s all sorts of drama around this proposal, but it is certainly, if nothing else, a statement of the president’s intent to make people worth a lot of money pay a lot more in taxes.

OK, so that’s a lot of proposed tax increases, almost all of them focused on those who are rich and corporations. Overall, Jim, what stands out to you about this Biden term two tax increase plan?

I think we could very fairly say that it’s the largest tax increasing plan by a sitting president or a presidential nominee for a party in American history.

He wants to get a lot of money from corporations and people who earn or are worth a lot of money.

But the rub, of course, is it’s hard to see the Congressional math that lets Biden accomplish these tax increases, some of which, like you said, he couldn’t get done the first time. Why would we think he would get them done the second time even if he wins this fall?

Yeah, it would be really difficult. Biden would have to win in November. Democrats would have to take the House of Representatives back from Republicans, which is certainly possible. It’s very closely divided right now. And they’d need to hold at least 50 seats in the Senate. And then those 50 Democrats in the Senate would have to be willing to go along with far more in tax increases than Democrats were last time around.

So if there is a second term, it feels like we should assume it will be very difficult perhaps even quite unlikely he’s going to get to push through a lot of these taxes. Which makes me wonder, Jim, why is Biden running on a tax program that he knows has so little chance of becoming reality and when it’s pretty clear that he’s gotten a lot of stuff done without raising taxes? It turns out that’s not been all that essential to getting infrastructure or climate bills done. So why is he making this so central?

Several reasons. One of them is it’s very important to him rhetorically to talk about fiscal responsibility. Big parts of the Biden agenda, the CHIPS bill, the infrastructure bill, some other legislation, were not actually paid for. The spending and tax cuts were not offset by tax increases.

So they’re going to add to the debt.

Right. So they’re going to add to the debt. Same is true of the stimulus bill. But moving forward, the president has said that he’s going to pay for his agenda and he’s actually going to have some extra tax dollars coming in left over to help pay down future budget deficits. And on paper, it’s the way to pay for Biden’s other big, expansive plans that he hasn’t been able to do but wants to — universal child care, federal paid leave, investing in elder care, just a whole bunch of things that he still wants to do more — housing initiatives.

The president needs money to make a case that he’s being fiscally responsible, and this is the money that would do that.

So that’s one reason. Another reason is the calendar. Biden and his team are looking ahead to the end of 2025, and they know that if he wins another term, he will be in office at a rare moment in Washington, when basically tax policy has to be on the Congressional agenda.

Well, Republicans, when they passed their tax cuts in 2017, set a bunch of them to expire at the end of 2025 in order to lower the cost of the bill.

These are the Trump tax cuts.

The Trump tax cuts. And that includes all the tax cuts for individuals. So now that those are coming due, there’s going to be a fight in Washington over whether to extend them or make them permanent or change them in some way or just let them expire, and Democrats know there’s going to be a huge fight that will reach almost certainly the floor of the House and the Senate. And so Biden wants to be ready.

He wants to be ready with a suite of policy proposals that Democrats can basically pull off the shelf and try to use to put Republicans in a box. Basically say, we would like to keep taxes low or cut them further for low income workers, middle class workers. But we want to pay for that by raising taxes on the rich. You Republicans also want to do nice things for low and middle class workers, but you want to cut taxes for corporations and the rich, and we think that’s a political loser for you.

So Biden is ready with what they think will be a political winner for Democrats in this almost certain floor tax fight at the end of 2025.

And that brings us to the last reason why Biden is doing this, and maybe the most important, which is it’s really good politics.

Just explain that. Why is talking about tax increases, net tax increases, such good politics?

If you talk to Democratic pollsters, if you talk to people inside the White House, outside the White House, political strategists anywhere in Biden’s orbit, they all agree that the public loves the idea of forcing rich people and corporations to pay their, quote, “fair share.” It’s just become a winning and central political argument in Democratic campaigns, the idea that corporations avoid taxes, that rich people avoid taxes, and that Joe Biden is trying to position himself as a champion of the idea that they need to pay more. Those corporations and those rich people need to pay more, and he’s going to make it happen.

You’re describing this as something that is kind of a new political reality. Is that right?

Yeah, it’s evolved over the last decade or so I think. For a long time in Washington, the conventional wisdom was just couldn’t talk about tax increases of any kind. They were poison. There was a whole anti-tax movement that did a really good job of messaging that, and Democratic candidates got very scared of talking about raising taxes even on the very, very rich.

That started to turn over time. But it’s really changed. I think we saw in the 2020 election that the Democratic primary had just enormous amounts of taxes on corporations and the rich funding all sorts of policy proposals — Medicare for all and universal child care and trillions and trillions of dollars — and Democratic candidates like Liz Warren and Bernie Sanders competing to see who could tax corporations and the rich the most.

Biden is a product of that primary. He was one of the most moderate people in that group, but his proposals are really outside of the historical norm for Democratic candidates up until then. And that reflects the fact that pollsters have been doing all this research, finding that the American people, including independents and increasingly numbers of Republicans, just don’t think corporations pay their fair share and are open to the idea they should pay more.

This is really interesting, and it makes me think that what you’re really saying is that there might have been a time when a Democratic nominee like Joe Biden might have reveled in his image as an overall tax cutter. But that is not this moment, and that is not this candidate. He wants to be a tax increaser. He thinks that is where the politics are.

I think that’s exactly right when you think about tax increaser as tax increaser on the rich and on corporations. There’s two ways to be a successful populist politician. One of them is to be like Trump and run around saying you’re going to do enormous tax cuts for everybody, which is a Republican version of populism. Trump, my biggest tax cut in history, I’m going to do another huge, enormous tax cut. It’s going to be so big you won’t believe it.

There might have been a time when Democrats tried to follow that playbook. But Biden’s not doing that. He’s leaning into the other side of populism. He’s telling workers, hey, I’m on your side with these big companies. They’re trying to screw you, and I’m not going to stand for it. And so I’m going to raise their taxes. I’m going to make them pay more so that there’s more money for you, whether that’s more tax cuts or more programs or whatever.

And that is the Democratic version of populism right now, and that’s the one that Joe Biden is running on. And that’s why he’s so happy to talk about raising corporate taxes because it’s a way to tell workers, hey, I’m on your side.

Right. Even if that’s not what he’s done or ever may be able to do.

Yeah. Part of the problem with populism is that you make a lot of promises you can’t keep, and this certainly, in his first term, has been an area where the president has talked a much bigger game than he’s been able to execute. The second term might be different, but that doesn’t really matter for the campaign. What matters is the rhetoric.

Well, Jim, thank you very much. We appreciate it.

Thank you. Always a pleasure.

Here’s what else you need to know today. On Tuesday, Israel confirmed that it had carried out the airstrike that killed seven aid workers delivering food to civilians in Gaza. The attack, which occurred on Monday, struck a convoy run by the World Central Kitchen, a nonprofit group. At the time of the attack, the aid workers were traveling in clearly marked cars that designated them as non-combatants.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the attack as unintentional and said that his government deeply regretted the deaths. In its own statement, World Central Kitchen called the strike unforgivable and said that as a result, it would suspend its aid work in Gaza, where millions of people are in dire need of both food and medicine.

Today’s episode was produced by Stella Tan and Mary Wilson with help from Michael Simon Johnson. It was edited by Lisa Chow, contains original music by Dan Powell and Marion Lozano, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.

• April 4, 2024   •   32:37 Israel’s Deadly Airstrike on the World Central Kitchen
• April 3, 2024   •   27:42 The Accidental Tax Cutter in Chief
• April 2, 2024   •   29:32 Kids Are Missing School at an Alarming Rate
• April 1, 2024   •   36:14 Ronna McDaniel, TV News and the Trump Problem
• March 29, 2024   •   48:42 Hamas Took Her, and Still Has Her Husband
• March 28, 2024   •   33:40 The Newest Tech Start-Up Billionaire? Donald Trump.
• March 27, 2024   •   28:06 Democrats’ Plan to Save the Republican House Speaker
• March 26, 2024   •   29:13 The United States vs. the iPhone
• March 25, 2024   •   25:59 A Terrorist Attack in Russia
• March 24, 2024   •   21:39 The Sunday Read: ‘My Goldendoodle Spent a Week at Some Luxury Dog ‘Hotels.’ I Tagged Along.’
• March 22, 2024   •   35:30 Chuck Schumer on His Campaign to Oust Israel’s Leader
• March 21, 2024   •   27:18 The Caitlin Clark Phenomenon

Hosted by Michael Barbaro

Featuring Jim Tankersley

Produced by Stella Tan and Mary Wilson

With Michael Simon Johnson

Edited by Lisa Chow

Original music by Dan Powell and Marion Lozano

Engineered by Chris Wood

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In his campaign for re-election, President Biden has said that raising taxes on the wealthy and on big corporations is at the heart of his agenda. But under his watch, overall net taxes have decreased.

Jim Tankersley, who covers economic policy for The Times, explains.

On today’s episode

Jim Tankersley , who covers economic policy at the White House for The New York Times.

Background reading

An analysis prepared for The New York Times estimates that the tax changes President Biden has ushered into law will amount to a net cut of about $600 billion over four years.

“Does anybody here think the tax code’s fair?” For Mr. Biden, tax policy has been at the center of his efforts to make the economy more equitable.

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The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Dan Farrell, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Summer Thomad, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.

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Jim Tankersley writes about economic policy at the White House and how it affects the country and the world. He has covered the topic for more than a dozen years in Washington, with a focus on the middle class. More about Jim Tankersley

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