Centre for Family and Population Research Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences

Although debates continue over the demographic impact of China’s half century Malthusian campaign to control its population (1970-2021), the underlying disagreement concerns what to call it. The ubiquitous “one-child policy” label narrows attention to one-child limits imposed during a 35-year sub-era (1980-2015), a long-recognized misnomer that excludes the initial decade of compulsion and obscures the broader program of regulations and enforcements that evolved therein. This research reveals a misnomer further flawed for misidentifying the birth ceiling most responsible for its transformative demographic consequences. Even with developmental factors fully considered, China’s population today is at least 600 million lower owing to this campaign. However, both that reduced population and the rise in missing females (a major unintended consequence) were due far less to one-child limits than other birth quotas and regulations. Intuition fails because decades of one-child images, along with each utterance of the phrase, keep refreshing the misnomer.

Dr. Daniel Goodkind

For over 30 years, Daniel Goodkind’s research on demographic trends in Asia has clustered around four major themes: zodiacal birth timing, sex ratio imbalances, aging, and the
impact of population policies. His work at the US Census Bureau since 1998 has also involved considerable demographic analysis and international technical assistance. He presents this
seminar as an Independent Researcher.