CHILD POLICIES- CHINA
China, worried about an aging population , is studying scrapping its controversial one-child policy but will not do away with family planning policies all together.
With the worlds biggest population straining scares land, water and energy resources. China has enforced rules to restrict family size since 1970. Rules vary but usually limit the family to one child or two in the country side.
The average number of children that would born to a women over her lifetime has decreased to 1.8 in china today, from 5.8 in 1970 and below the replacement rate of 2.1
China say its policies have prevented several hundred million birth and boosted prosperity, but experts have warned of a looming social time-bomb from an aging population and widening gender disparity stemming from traditional preference for boys.
State media said in December that china’s population would grow to 1.5 billion people by 2033, with birth rate set to soar over the next 5 year. Officials have also cautioned that population control are being unraveled by the increasing mobility of china’s 150 million odd migrant workers, who travel from rural areas to work in more affluent cities.
China has vowed to step heavier fines on wealthy citizen who flout family planning laws in response to the emergence of an upper class willing to pay standard fines to have more children.
Chinese officials have estimate that by 2020 there will be 30 million men known as “bare branches” unable to find a wife to marry and have their own child.
Another consequence of the one child rule has been the creation of generation of “ little emperors”, indulged and cosseted boy children who are often overweight, Arrogant and lacking in social skills.