In China and throughout East Asia, a significant shift in birth and marriage rates is taking place. Though the implications are still inconclusive, these demographic changes, in China in particular, should take into account the country’s three decades-old social experiment, the “One Child Policy.”
In a testimony today at 2:00pm ET before the U.S. Congressional – Executive Commission on China, expert demographer Nicholas Eberstadt explores these trends and the future of China’s contentious procreation policy:
[T]he East Asian rim today exhibits some of the world’s very lowest fertility levels—all in places that have never toyed with compulsory birth control…So we may reasonably ask: Has forcible population control accelerated modern China’s fertility decline? Would fertility levels really be higher today without the program? Is it possible they would have been even lower?
The simple truth of the matter is: we cannot really address these immense issues with any great confidence as of yet. From a methodological perspective, estimating the net demographic impact of China’s police state population policy presents an exceedingly difficult analytical challenge. There are of course a number of approaches that could be pursued—but none is without its limitations. Such a project, however, in my view strongly merits active pursuit—not least so we may have some sense in advance of the magnitude of demographic responses that will be elicited when the One Child Policy is finally scrapped.
This testimony is embargoed until delivery. Read it in full, “Population Control in China: State Sponsored Violence Against Women and Children.”
To arrange an interview with Nicholas Eberstadt or another AEI scholar, please contact mediaservices@aei.org or 202.862.5829
from AEI » Latest Content http://ift.tt/1JeAPP8
0 التعليقات:
Post a Comment