China

China’s one child policy

Malcolm Potts
2006

China’s one child policy: The policy that changed the world

“The Chinese one child policy is unique in the history of the world. It was a source of great pain for one generation, but a generation later it began to yield important economic benefits. For China, and the world as a whole, the one child policy was one of the most important social policies ever implemented.”

Published in British Medical Journal, August 2006, 361-362

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Are the population policies of India and China responsible for the fertility decline?

Nadia Diamond-Smith
Malcolm Potts
2010

In the 1970s, policy-makers in both India and China, convinced that reducing population growth was critical for ending poverty, instituted coercive population policies. Yet fertility had already been declining in both countries before the population policies were instituted. In China, the total fertility rate (TFR) had already fallen to 2.9 before the institution of the One-Child Policy. In India, fertility continued to decline at roughly the same rate before, during and after ‘The Emergency’. Regardless of government mandates, couples in both countries before the policies and since have...