Adding some nuance to the one-child policy
I found this many months ago but it is still relevant. From a Reuters article on the one-child policy:
China’s famous “one child” policy is actually less rigorous than its name suggests, and allows urban parents to have two offspring if they are both only children. Rural couples are allowed a second child if their first is a girl.
This is still the official line in most of China, but the financial hub of Shanghai is now rich enough to focus on a new concern — the burden of an ageing population of native-born Shanghainese…
The number of couples eligible to have two children rose from 4,600 in 2005 to 7,300 in 2008, he added.
Of course, 7300 in a city of over 16 million people… who are the 7300 “eligible”?
Via shortformblog, full article by Reuters here.
But that’s just eligible couples – meaning 7,300 married couples that are both only children. I’d say that the majority of only children in Shanghai, or all of China, are still single, with the very first children of the “One Child” policy having only started getting married at the earliest maybe 8 years ago. I expect that this eligible couple quantity would increase dramatically with each year, right? And Shanghai would probably also see lower numbers in that women there are waiting longer to get married then their counterparts in more rural locations…
I haven’t run the numbers, but 7300 still seems a bit small even if you account for the 5-8 year band that are married… tho i wonder… maybe that IS normal. any idea what the age distribution in urban china/shanghai is?
I’m living in China and I wonder why 3/4 Chinese friends I have and Chinese people I meet, (in Shanghai, Beijing or some rural farming village in Guangdong) all have multiple siblings and or multiple children. What a farce the one child policy is.