Change imminent for China's One Child Policy

There is a big difference between relatively affluent middle class people in a developed country who have 2 or 3 kids, often planned and peasant families of up to dozen; no planning whatsoever, in an undeveloped country.

This is precisely what the one child policy has always been about and its phasing out will match the degree of transfer China achieves from one condition to the other.

SampanViking said:

There is a big difference between relatively affluent middle class people in a developed country who have 2 or 3 kids, often planned and peasant families of up to dozen; no planning whatsoever, in an undeveloped country.

This is precisely what the one child policy has always been about and its phasing out will match the degree of transfer China achieves from one condition to the other.

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I think even developed countries could benefit from a form of family planning policy. Take the UK as an example, for many poor and uneducated young people who have poor education and no real marketable skills, having babies have become their career.

The state gives a fix sum per child in the form of benefits, but the marginal cost to feed and raise a child drops the more children you have. Especially if you never planned on raising and caring for those kids properly to start with. So the more kids these people have, the more profit they get.

It is increasingly not uncommon for poor, poorly educated young families to have developing nation sized families. Those kids brought up with little parental supervision, poor parental example and often little parental love and affection are a timebomb waiting to go off I fear.

The vast majority with either become another benefit dependent baby factory family, and or turn to crime. Very very few will break out of that corrosive and destructive cycle and environment. And if that cycle and trend is not broken up soon, they will likely become the majority one day because urban professionals are having far fewer babies much later in life.

plawolf said:

I think even developed countries could benefit from a form of family planning policy. Take the UK as an example, for many poor and uneducated young people who have poor education and no real marketable skills, having babies have become their career.

The state gives a fix sum per child in the form of benefits, but the marginal cost to feed and raise a child drops the more children you have. Especially if you never planned on raising and caring for those kids properly to start with. So the more kids these people have, the more profit they get.

It is increasingly not uncommon for poor, poorly educated young families to have developing nation sized families. Those kids brought up with little parental supervision, poor parental example and often little parental love and affection are a timebomb waiting to go off I fear.

The vast majority with either become another benefit dependent baby factory family, and or turn to crime. Very very few will break out of that corrosive and destructive cycle and environment. And if that cycle and trend is not broken up soon, they will likely become the majority one day because urban professionals are having far fewer babies much later in life.

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I think that the UK Benefit system and its associated culture is a very good model for China to study and assiduously avoid!

You could argue that such a social development is itself a symptom of a nation on a diametrically opposite model of development to that of the Chinese.

Why is natalism so important as the only viable source of population growth? What's wrong with immigration?

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I am not bothered by immigration. I wholeheartedly support allowing more immigration to America. But my views are rare because most people around the world, even in immigration-friendly countries like Australia and Singapore, are skeptical about a large percentage of their population being foreigners. China is no different, and it is unrealistic to hope that China's leader will throw open the door to foreign workers to make up the baby shortage. However, if they continue on the current path, China will be forced to choose between the Japan model of low birthrate and low inward immigration, or the Singapore model of low birthrate and high inward immigration.

each of those additional children are not only assets but also liabilities because there would need to be jobs for them. a malthusian scenario is where the marginal net economic value produced by additional children is less than zero, which means that population reaches a point where people are so abundant that their labour does not generate enough economic value to feed themselves.

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The supply of jobs is not finite. It expands over time. The unemployment rate in the United States has remained stable over the last 70 years despite a population that has nearly doubled. The Malthusian nightmare you describe has never happened in a peacetime market economy because of the inherent flexibility in prices. If the labor supply is greater than the supply of jobs, wages fall and more jobs appear to take advantage of those lower wages. This ultimately results in lower prices for consumers as well.

And so the Chinese population explode, again, and balloon to become a burden? We've seen how population outstrip its potential in nations like India and the Philippines, the poor will naturally reproduce more and that's a disaster waiting to happen.

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What you call a burden I call an investment. India and the Philippines are poor because of the anti-market economic policies first, and corrupt and inefficient government second. As soon as India began liberalizing its economy in the 1990s the economy grew much faster than in previous years and the middle class began to grow. For development experts to claim that India and the Philippines' poverty as the result of large populations is like a doctor claiming the problem with a patient's broken arm is that they have an arm at all! The doctor says, "No arm, no problem!" The development "expert" says "No people, no poverty!"

I believe governments should pay people to have children because children are a positive externality on society. The parents bear most of the time and financial costs of raising the child while the society reaps most of the benefits of a productive worker. Children rarely take care of their parents anymore. They pay taxes to the government and work jobs that improve the welfare of everyone but move out of the house as soon as possible and don't full pay back the investment their parents made in them.

Geographer said:

The supply of jobs is not finite. It expands over time. The unemployment rate in the United States has remained stable over the last 70 years despite a population that has nearly doubled. The Malthusian nightmare you describe has never happened in a peacetime market economy because of the inherent flexibility in prices. If the labor supply is greater than the supply of jobs, wages fall and more jobs appear to take advantage of those lower wages. This ultimately results in lower prices for consumers as well.

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you seem to assume that the market will adjust perfectly for any circumstances, the fact of the matter is that there are externalities and inefficiencies induced by the effects of market equalization. in the long run the market will always equalize somehow, but some effects of this equalization are harmful. for example: when labour supply outstrips demand, wages fall, but the jobs that are created may not be in the most productive industries and represent underemployment. this is visible in china today as chinese workers are underemployed compared to their western counterparts. (modes of production is not advanced enough to employ all these workers to their full potential) this is a good thing for consumers in the west, but a bad thing for the surplus chinese workers who have to deal with poor conditions and exploitation.

there is a prevalent argument in economics today that all world economies were malthusian prior to the modern age. we do not have many textbook "malthusian nightmares" in real life, but when labour supply passes a certain point, people as a factor of production (labour) are subject to diminishing marginal returns. (each additional input generates a smaller output than the previous) the "malthusian nightmare" is a hypothetical situation where the final output of human labour is actually less valuable than the input. every economy runs on this dynamic so every economy is malthusian to some degree. (china is more malthusian than the west) it's all about finding the output maximizing balance of inputs.

Geographer said:

I believe governments should pay people to have children because children are a positive externality on society. The parents bear most of the time and financial costs of raising the child while the society reaps most of the benefits of a productive worker. Children rarely take care of their parents anymore. They pay taxes to the government and work jobs that improve the welfare of everyone but move out of the house as soon as possible and don't full pay back the investment their parents made in them.

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children may indeed be a positive externality on society if the labour market can accomodate them. however the cost of childrearing on the parents is in fact a cost imposed on society. parents who have to devote time and money to raise children are less productive workers; if the opportunity cost of childrearing outweighs the economic returns the children will generate, (because the market cannot accommodate them adequately) then children produce negative externalities on society.

Geographer said:

What you call a burden I call an investment. India and the Philippines are poor because of the anti-market economic policies first, and corrupt and inefficient government second. As soon as India began liberalizing its economy in the 1990s the economy grew much faster than in previous years and the middle class began to grow. For development experts to claim that India and the Philippines' poverty as the result of large populations is like a doctor claiming the problem with a patient's broken arm is that they have an arm at all! The doctor says, "No arm, no problem!" The development "expert" says "No people, no poverty!"

I believe governments should pay people to have children because children are a positive externality on society. The parents bear most of the time and financial costs of raising the child while the society reaps most of the benefits of a productive worker. Children rarely take care of their parents anymore. They pay taxes to the government and work jobs that improve the welfare of everyone but move out of the house as soon as possible and don't full pay back the investment their parents made in them.

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Your model only work in an ideal world or a sterile lab scenario, without consideration of the real world complications or, at the very least, the conservative and patriarchal nature of Chinese society, something that not even communism and Cultural Revolution able to root out. Situation of gender ratio imbalance will be magnified several fold. Though there's something called abortion and I'm a hardline "pro-choice" advocate, it doesn't extend to when abortion is due to "I want a boy not girl" kind of situation....and trust me, you get a lot more when birth control is no longer the enforced policy. On top of that, when birth control not a policy, the poor - who already not getting enough proper medical support and education - will breed like rabbits, and China's population still largely poor peasants, not that much middle class.

If the state to spend so much on welfare, it'll spend to its own ruin when it is still largely a 3rd world nation with a population base of 1.3 billion. If the state to shoulder the financial cost to raise children, then as an "investment" it has to be of some purpose to national interest...in short, it's only right for the state to decides one's course of life from the womb, thus to reap the "benefit" of its "investment". Only the most Stalinist of regimes will do something like that, and that's not China, or at least not yet. And neither is China raising its population for warfare.

In the end, the economy model needs to change, in step with the progress and we're seeing Chinese government doing that. It's a matter of time and will that China to step-up on its economic model and adopt on Japanese model of automation.

there is a prevalent argument in economics today that all world economies were malthusian prior to the modern age. we do not have many textbook "malthusian nightmares" in real life, but when labour supply passes a certain point, people as a factor of production (labour) are subject to diminishing marginal returns. (each additional input generates a smaller output than the previous) the "malthusian nightmare" is a hypothetical situation where the final output of human labour is actually less valuable than the input. every economy runs on this dynamic so every economy is malthusian to some degree. (china is more malthusian than the west) it's all about finding the output maximizing balance of inputs.

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The scenario describe is only possible under extreme government mismanagement or total war. The worst case Malthusian nightmare given in this thread and by others is the slums of India and the Philippines. But even those slums are net producers to society! Nobody is giving welfare to the residents of those slums. They receive few if any government services. Slum residents have to work hard for everything they consume, probably harder than any of us on this message board. Recent research shows that slum residents contribute a lot to the economy, especially in low-level service jobs, street vendor jobs, and construction.

Do you still believe that poor people in India and the Philippines are net consumers and an overall drag on the economy?

By the way, do you have some aversion to using capital letters? Your message would be easier to read if you using proper punctuation.

plawolf said:

People don't mate for life, and they don't only marry people of the same age either, so I don't think the problem is as bad as the numbers would suggest.

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While a sexual imbalance is not a good thing and nor is the social phenomenon it reflects, I find the above table instructive. Total percept 15+ never married is 31.2% in the United States. Even eliminating the younger brackets the never married rates from 35-44 hovering around 20%. Even taking into account homosexual relationships and cohabitation, the figures does not suggest that a 30 million or so bare sticks (amounting to after all a mere 15% or so - of their age bracket) would provide an insurmountable and highly destabilising factor.

The key point here is the management of expectations, and from what I have seen so far the feeling had not been that young males cannot get into a relationship, merely that it becomes a little harder. More likely, those who want to marry will end up getting married and if you think about it, it was never about having one female for one male or vice versa anyway, in a country as vast as China it's silly to think that you can have perfect high relationship male just because somewhere there's you allotted Chinese female; competition got a bit stiffer, that's all. There is simply no evidence or precedence that this would produce any large instability.

Preux said:

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A1. Marital Status of People 15 Years and Over, by Age, Sex, Personal Earnings, Race, and Hispanic Origin/1, 2003[/url]

While a sexual imbalance is not a good thing and nor is the social phenomenon it reflects, I find the above table instructive. Total percept 15+ never married is 31.2% in the United States. Even eliminating the younger brackets the never married rates from 35-44 hovering around 20%. Even taking into account homosexual relationships and cohabitation, the figures does not suggest that a 30 million or so bare sticks (amounting to after all a mere 15% or so - of their age bracket) would provide an insurmountable and highly destabilising factor.

The key point here is the management of expectations, and from what I have seen so far the feeling had not been that young males cannot get into a relationship, merely that it becomes a little harder. More likely, those who want to marry will end up getting married and if you think about it, it was never about having one female for one male or vice versa anyway, in a country as vast as China it's silly to think that you can have perfect high relationship male just because somewhere there's you allotted Chinese female; competition got a bit stiffer, that's all. There is simply no evidence or precedence that this would produce any large instability.

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Good point. Personally, I have never seen any instances where men in China blame the government for their inability to find a wife. There is even a humours saying in China that goes something along the lines of, 'you can't blame the government if you are unlucky' (not aimed specifically at courtship before anyone gets the wrong idea). The only people I have ever seen trying to assign blame for some Chinese men not being able to find a wife to the Chinese government are foreigners who usually have a huge bias and a massive axe to grind to start with.

Only in a very few extreme cases are there actual instances where there are just no suitable women to marry within a community. In the vast majority of cases, there are plenty of perfectly good women who every man is free to pursue. In a way, the psychology is similar to capitalism. Even though the odds of wooing the perfect women is slim, just as it is for someone landing a top paying job, the fact that there are plenty of 'perfect' women/high paying jobs around, creates enough hope that the vast majority of men would rather focus their energy and efforts on trying to get the girl/job rather than bemoan the government for not providing enough women/jobs. As a lady would say, that's just not attractive.

Geographer said:

The scenario describe is only possible under extreme government mismanagement or total war. The worst case Malthusian nightmare given in this thread and by others is the slums of India and the Philippines. But even those slums are net producers to society! Nobody is giving welfare to the residents of those slums. They receive few if any government services. Slum residents have to work hard for everything they consume, probably harder than any of us on this message board. Recent research shows that slum residents contribute a lot to the economy, especially in low-level service jobs, street vendor jobs, and construction.

Do you still believe that poor people in India and the Philippines are net consumers and an overall drag on the economy?

By the way, do you have some aversion to using capital letters? Your message would be easier to read if you using proper punctuation.

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it's a personal preference that i'd rather not capitalize while typing simply because i always found using the shift key cumbersome. on my new computer the shift key is especially terrible because it is only the size of a regular square key. most people seem to understand what i type because i try not to misspell things or mess up my grammar. please try to bear with me if you will even if the lowercase letters bother you.

first of all, i never said that poor people in india and the philippines are net consumers, nor was i the one to bring those countries into the discussion in the first place.

secondly, it makes no difference if there is a government safety net to support the people in india/the philippines' slums, the fact that they are underemployed makes the situation more malthusian than in a place where they can be more productive. the fact that so many people cannot find employment that allows them to reach their productive potential means that they will likely stay poor because their numbers only devalues their labour. granted, if the market adjusts and all of a sudden gainful new job markets are created to accommodate these people then the situation will be less malthusian, but that is not the case in most places where there is overpopulation.

i have already acknowledged that the malthusian nightmare is a hypothetical situation, but you seem to have ignored the bulk of my previous post where i explained in detail why economies are malthusian to relative degrees.