Why Did China’s Population Grow So Quickly?

David Howden and Yang Zhou

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: By the 1970s, China’s communist government faced a looming resource constraint in “caring” for its nearly 1 billion citizens, necessitating a policy to alleviate the crippling aftermath of nearly 30 years of rapid population growth. The one-child policy of 1979 was the result, and it has since become heralded as an effective government policy to save humans from their lack of reproductive restraint. In this article we explain why population growth in China was so strong from 1949-79, and why the one-child policy was seen as the best solution. Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the government promoted pro-natalist policies and remunerated families not according to their productivity but by the number of workers. Faced with general economic scarcity from the communist regime’s poor economic policies, parents pursued children as the sole means to avoid an otherwise bleak lifestyle.

Keywords: one-child policy; labor shortage; China; Malthusian (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J11 J18 O1 O10 P2 P20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in The Independent Review 20.2(2015): pp. 227-248

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:79795

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