Global Issue of Overpopulation: Solutions of One-child Policy

Earth's population has exponentially increased over the last million years. Currently, the society prejudices people who don't want to have kids. Thus, this prejudice by society acts as a significant incentive for couples to reproduce. Consequently, this drastic boom births cause the population to increase exponentially, leaving the death ratio in the dust. Today's world population is around 7 billion people, but researchers speculate that it will grow to about 8 million by 2025 and 9.3 billion by 2050. However, this incremental population growth leads to decreased resources, land, employment, and incrementally increasing over-farming, deforestation, pollution, diseases. Overpopulation is a global issue which needs solutions. In this essay one f the possible solution is presented. Population control has many methods, opposing theories, and could have negative impacts on the society.

At this point, there are multitudes of methods of population control. The plans include contraception, infant mortality decrease, one-child policies, and family planning. The method of contraception is very controversial by different religions. Furthermore, this is the most popular method of population control. For instance, Christians widely oppose this way of population control. Moreover, this method, if applied wrong, can have adverse effects on the mom. The high infant mortality is also a factor in some places in the world that causes overpopulation. This method is utilized only in developing countries; such parents want to ensure that at least some of their offspring can grow to adulthood. Scientist hypothesize that the decrease in infant mortality could reduce population growth. One child policy is widely used by China to control the population and was later abolished in 2015. This policy restricts the couple to have only one child.

The Role of Norms in the Society

Throughout history, it is the norm of the community for couples to have children. Moreover, the nation also places a significant emphasis on the mentality that “every couple needs to have a child.” For instance, Christianity professes that mentality through their beliefs and ideals. Quiverfull is a theological perspective of the conservative Christians; endorses procreation, abstaining from all forms of birth control, family planning, and sterilization. The foundation of this religious theory is in Psalms 127:3-5; it exemplifies that “children are a heritage of the Lord and the child is the gift of God”. Thus, Quiverfull adherents abstain from any attempts to regulate fertility as usurpation of divine power and providence. Overall the believers of Quiverfull endorses the idea that each child is a blessing, cannot be viewed as financially burdensome. This mentality, coupled with the morality of the society stigmatizes many childless couples in the nation.

At this point, there are many cases where society puts mental pressure and stress on couples who are hesitant to have children for many reasons to bear children. A website called LivesScience presents a research study published by Purdue University; states that, ''What's remarkable about our findings is the moral outrage participants reported feeling toward a stranger who decided not to have children,’” says Leslie Ashburn-Nardo, an associate professor of psychology. On that note, many societies ridicule the childless couples for not bearing children. This finding proves that most people view parenthood as a morality initiative. For instance, when I was a child in India, I often heard my mom berating to my dad about how the current society places so much mental pressure and scrutinization of the community on the mother if she can't bear children due to health reasons. As a consequence, the rates of suicides skyrocketed due to the amount of mental pressure placed upon them by society. For instance, a website in the name of academic.oup.com sheds light on the suicidal rates due to infertility in Denmark; it exemplifies that “Suicide was the cause of death for 92 women (7.1% of all deaths), most among women who did not have a child after the fertility evaluation”. This evidence proves that society puts tremendous mental pressure on childless couples, especially the women causing them to have a feeling of hopelessness, lack of unity, meaning in life, loss of control, and social isolation leading to depression or suicide.

Solutions to Overpopulation: Effects of One-Child Policy in China

China is one of the leading countries utilizing various methods of population, most notably the one-child system. Civil rights organizations and various religions did not widely receive the policy. Chinese government enacted the one-child policy in 1979. They enforced the one-child policy through various sanctions and financial incentives. The government also utilized draconian measures, including forced abortions and sterilizations for those who violated the law. There are many adverse effects on society due to the implementation of the one-child policy.

In the beginning, the Chinese government enacted measures that promoted the practice of a method of family planning to control the birth rates. In the article Assessing the impact of the “one-child policy in China: A synthetic control approach analyzes the effects of the one-child policy in China states that “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.' The rules were especially more severe in the urban areas than the women until the age of 25 and men at the age of 28 and set a requirement for the couples to have less than two children. However, this plan was scrapped because it was considered insufficient in controlling the population because they didn't achieve their official quota.

Experiment Assessing Total Fertility Rate (TFR)

A research proposed by Abadie was to create a synthetic China to study the adverse effects on the one-child policy from 1973 to 1979 is to observe the total fertility (TFR) rate of the post-intervention period. The experiments asses the TFR by encompassing similar countries like India to create Synthetic China. The research exemplifies an interesting observation “...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.” Furthermore, the graph that showcases the TFR of synthetic China was drastically lower than the data provided by the Sixth Census. Consequently, there could be many speculations of why this could occur. One example is that this simulation didn't account for any hidden children.

To validate the data, they ran a permutation test. They ran this test by randomly selecting 500 countries, and each of those countries is treated to the 1873 and 1879 observations. This test indicates that the one-child policy substantially reduced the population by 85 million. There are several drawbacks to this experiment. One significant drawback is stated, 'Is the size, complexity, the political, and economic system of China so unique that it is possible to create a ‘synthetic China’ at all?' This a drawback because synthetic China is a method to draw similarities from different countries and to assess the impact of the policies in 1873 by subjecting different countries to the one-child system administered by China. Besides, this is quite problematic because every country is complex and cannot be subjected to the same policy because of the political and economic system of each country. Giel states that this was a more systematic, transparent, and viable system rather than merely drawing on a single comparator (country).

Effects of One-Child Policy

One adverse effect of the population control in China is the impact on the economy. In the article called 'A Comparative Analysis of the Population Control Policies in China and India' by Min Kyung Kim analyzes the adverse effect on the economy of China, states that 'A major side-effect is that China faces rapid ageing[aging] and rapid shrinking of its labor force' Since the one-child policy reduces the birth rates, as a consequence, it inversely increases the elderly citizens. Also, this policy is exponentially decreasing the pool of young and unskilled workers who work in factories. This method causes a big dent in the Chinese economy because the economy of China is mainly based on importation and exportation. Furthermore, the article also shares that this policy reduces the career opportunities for the young; and many companies hesitate to hire young men and women because they want to avert multiple maternity and paternity leaves and also, they don’t want to pay for those leaves.

Another significant side effect is gender imbalance. In the article, it states that '… the strong cultural preference for boys in China leads to female fetuses being aborted'. Moreover, I also feel that the commercialistic economy in China also leads to the abortion of female fetuses. To illustrate, an average family in China most likely owns a business and many Asian cultures requires a son to inherit their father’s business; since the one-child policy restricts a couple only to bear a single child; thus, leading a family to favor male fetus and aborting the female fetus. 

Conclusion of the Effects of One-Child Policy

The one-child policy in China significantly immensely reduced their population. The government claimed that they averted about 400 million births due to the one-child policy but at a high cost. The one-child was cited as the root causes for reducing the labor force, the skewed sex-ratios. To stop this trend of decline and rectify the effects caused by the one-child policy, the Chinese government to stop the one-child plan in 2015 and enact the two-child policy. This policy restricts couples to bear two children. There are a couple of benefits of this policy; it reduces the abortion rates of the female fetuses due to the preference of males. Moreover, this policy also increases the Chinese labor force because the labor force is regularly being supplied with more people due to this policy.

Solutions

There are many solutions to overpopulation other than the one-child policy and contraception. One solution to overpopulation include destigmatizing childless couples. In longevity, the destigmatizing of the childless couples will cause a decline in the population because all around the world, young couples are hesitant to bear children due to various reasons. Since destigmatizing the childless couples would relieve the mental pressure placed on them by society. Besides, this act could also be an encouragement to the couples who are hesitant to bear children to be childless for the rest of their life. This act won't have any significant consequences compared to other population control methods. Furthermore, the pros far outweigh the consequences. The first step to put this method into motion is for family members to deter themselves of this mentality that 'every couple need to have children' and to accept that some of their kids don't want to bear children and to support their stand in this issue, not do the opposite. In some families, they isolate and pressurize their child who doesn't want to bear kids and, even worse, cast them out for the rest of their life. This immense and consistent mental pressure and environment can cause increased rates of depression, which could lead to increased rates of suicide. Furthermore, to expedite this process, many religious institutions should accept and spread the word that “couples are not required to bear children, and it solely based on their choice.' This message would put a stop to those religious families who expect their children to bear children and as a result, eliminating the immense mental stress placed upon the child. This mentality would emphasize the message that they are accepted no matter what their stand in this pressing issue because most of the mental pressure comes from family. Slowly but surely, this evolved mentality could expand and spread from families to community, community to cities, cities to state, states to country, country to nations, and nations to the entire world.

Another solution is reducing infant mortality rate which is more effective than China. Kerala, a state in India employed this strategy through education around 1952. It also became the first country to have population control. Furthermore, India’s population control is not strictly enforced as China so the gender ratio is pretty balanced. The article analyzes the population control method; it states that “The male literacy rate in Kerala has the highest literacy rate at 96.11% whereas the female literacy rate is 92.07%...”. The high literacy rates in Kerala is a result of constant state funding and investments in education and health. Since the women have better knowledge, they are likely to keep their healthier; this method is directly correlated to the decline of the infant mortality rates, and the reduction of the infant mortality rates causes a drop in the birth rates. Since the children are surviving, the families need to have a couple of children to replace those expected to die.

Thus, the high literacy rates, especially women, caused the birth to drop. Furthermore, there are many advantages to this method. For instance, there won't be any negative impact on the economy as the one-child policy due to the fact there would be a constant stream of young blood going into the workforce. Also, there won't be a skewed gender ratio because this method is not limiting the number of children a couple can bear. Also, this method is based upon the concept of population control that deals with the reduction of infant mortality. This concept is stated in the different ways of population control; high infant mortality occurs in many countries’ due various reasons; to avoid this parents desire to ensure that at least some of their offspring can develop into adulthood, thus causes the population to rise. Since this method focuses on decreasing the high infant mortality through better health care systems and education, which is a critical player in the medical rates, it will eventually cause the birth rates to decline as proven by this system in Kerala.

To summarize, population control stems from overpopulation; as result, leads to decreased resources, land, employment, and incrementally increasing over-farming, deforestation, pollution, diseases. Furthermore, these factors influenced many overpopulated countries to seek viable solution to thwart this pressing crisis. Likewise, many of these policies like the one-child policy could have negative impacts on the society such as skewed gender ratios and weakened labor force.

Works Cited

• Min Kyung Kim. “A Comparative Analysis of the Population Control Policies in China and India: A New Approach to Population Control Methods.” World Economics, vol. 20, no.1, Jan.2019, pp. 119-141.
• Giel-Basten, Stuart, et al. “Assessing the Impact of the ‘One-Child Policy’ in China: A Synthetic Control Approach.” PLoS ONE, vol. 14, no.11, Nov 2019, pp. 1-17.
• “Here's Why Couples Without Kids Are Stigmatized.” LiveScience, Purch, https://www.livescience.com/58094-child-free-parents-moral-outrage.html.
• Agudo, Kenneth C. “4 Effects of Overpopulation and Their Possible Solutions.” Owlcation, Owlcation, 6 May 2018, https://owlcation.com/social-sciences/Human-Overpopulation-Its-Causes-Effects-and-Solutions.
• The English Bible King James Version. Norton, 2012, The English Bible King James Version.
• “U.S. and World Population Clock.” Population Clock, https://www.census.gov/popclock/.
• Kjaer, et al. “Suicide in Danish Women Evaluated for Fertility Problems.” OUP Academic, Oxford University Press, 13 June 2011, https://academic.oup.com/humrep/article/26/9/2401/720295.