Family Planning Gone Crazy

Some things only last so long. We all make sure we have the latest expiration date when we buy a gallon of milk Why? Because it will go sour. But what does a country do with a population policy that paid a huge short term dividend but now is about to go sour? With its one-child policy China has tricked nature into providing it with huge productivity gains; gains that lifted 100's of millions of Chinese out of dire poverty, but soon it will be time to pay the piper. Like Jabez Stone in the "Devil and Daniel Webster" China has struck a Faustian bargain and soon there will be the devil to pay. China introduced its one-child policy in 1979. Some argue that had China left well enough alone it would have enjoyed moderate success with out the impending bust. With the advent of contraception all developed countries have lowered their fertility rates. China probably would have done the same but with the one-child policy it accelerated the decline in fertility. As the ratio of dependants to workers lessened per capita productivity increased dramatically. Currently China has about three people working to support one dependant, either a child or an older person. It is reaping a “demographic dividend”.

In a recent post I argued that China will get old before it gets rich. From 2000 to 2010 the percentage of the population under 14 dropped from 23 to 17 percent. And that population is gender skewed. There are 120 male for every 100 female Chinese and in some villages that ratio may be as high as 150 to 100. Still like many American politicians who came of political age in the '70's, Chinese politicians cling to outmoded policy as if it were bold and new. One can dream that the US can right its ship when that generation dies, or more likely, is driven from power but China's fertility rate is so low that it cannot sustain itself and its governmental folly will be felt for a hundred years.

The China that Paul Krugman, the Enron advisor, praises has been barbaric in its enforcement of it one-child policy. Before the enlightenment in 1997 they punished violators by tearing down their houses for breaching the one-child policy. Now they confiscate the children. Local officials take “illegal children” and pack them off to orphanages where they are put up for adoption. Foreign adoptive parents pay $3,000-5,000 per child and the bureaucrats collect a kickback. Untold millions of female fetuses have been aborted, some 30 million Chinese men will never find wives and at some point female Chinese will become brood sows, have as many children as possible maybe get a one day maternity leave since China will need every worker and every mother. Yes there is the devil to pay.