China Announces End of One Child Policy
The Chinese government has announced the end of its one-child policy. It has been in effect since 1979 and has slowed down population growth in China for over three decades. Without the policy, China would probably have a total of 1.7 billion people instead of the 1.3 billion it has today. Now Chinese couples can officially have two children.
The decision comes at a time when Chinese authorities are worried about their country's ageing population. China's economic growth is endangered because fewer young workers are entering the workforce. At the moment , about a third of China's population is over 50. By 2050, over 35 % of the population will be over 65.
China started its family planning policy, aimed at slowing down population growth, at the end of the 1970s. Couples who had a second child had to pay fines and suffered from disadvantages at work. The single child of a family was supported by state benefits and free education up to a university degree. While this policy focused mainly on urban areas, families in rural China were allowed to have two children if the first was a girl. The policy led to hundreds of thousands of abortions over the decades. Illegally-born girls were often laid away or adopted by westerners. This has led to a gender imbalance in China.
Human rights organizations continue to criticize China's population planning. They say the new regulations simply change a one-child policy into a two-child policy. Women still do not have the right to determine how many children they want to have.
Related Topics
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- China Plans to Loosen One Child Policy
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- China's Population to Reach Peak in 2029
- Urban Population
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Words
- abortion =the killing of an unborn baby
- aim = target
- announce = to say in public; officially
- authorities = government organizations that have power
- benefits = here:money given by the state
- couple = man and woman who live together or are married
- decade = ten years
- degree = you get it when you finish the university; a title that you can use with your name
- determine = decide
- disadvantage = bad side of something
- endangered = in danger
- family planning = to control the number of children a family has
- fine = money that you pay as a punishment
- focus = concentrate on
- gender imbalance = when there are more men than women or the other way around
- government = the people who rule a country
- growth = the way something becomes larger
- human rights = the basic rights that everyone should have
- illegal = against the law
- in effect = here: the time when it became law
- policy = the way a government does something
- regulation = law
- rural = countryside
- support = help; give money to
- urban = city
- workforce = all the people who work in a country