IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/79795.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Why Did China’s Population Grow So Quickly?

Author

Listed:
  • Howden, David
  • Zhou, Yang

Abstract

By the 1970s, China’s communist government faced a looming resource constraint in “caring” for its nearly 1 billion citizens, necessitating a policy to alleviate the crippling aftermath of nearly 30 years of rapid population growth. The one-child policy of 1979 was the result, and it has since become heralded as an effective government policy to save humans from their lack of reproductive restraint. In this article we explain why population growth in China was so strong from 1949-79, and why the one-child policy was seen as the best solution. Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the government promoted pro-natalist policies and remunerated families not according to their productivity but by the number of workers. Faced with general economic scarcity from the communist regime’s poor economic policies, parents pursued children as the sole means to avoid an otherwise bleak lifestyle.

Suggested Citation

  • Howden, David & Zhou, Yang, 2015. "Why Did China’s Population Grow So Quickly?," MPRA Paper 79795, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:79795
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/79795/1/MPRA_paper_79795.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David Howden & Yang Zhou, 2014. "China's One-Child Policy: Some Unintended Consequences," Economic Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(3), pages 353-369, October.
    2. Watson, Andrew, 1983. "Agriculture looks for `shoes that fit': The production responsibility system and its implications," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 11(8), pages 705-730, August.
    3. Chan, Alfred L., 2001. "Mao's Crusade: Politics and Policy Implementation in China's Great Leap Forward," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199244065.
    4. N. Gregory Mankiw & David Romer & David Weil, 1990. "A Contribution to the Empirics of Economic Growth," Working Papers 1990-24, Brown University, Department of Economics.
    5. Krusekopf, Charles C., 2002. "Diversity in land-tenure arrangements under the household responsibility system in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 13(2-3), pages 297-312.
    6. Jeremy Greenwood & Ananth Seshadri & Guillaume Vandenbroucke, 2005. "The Baby Boom and Baby Bust," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 183-207, March.
    7. N. Gregory Mankiw & David Romer & David N. Weil, 1992. "A Contribution to the Empirics of Economic Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(2), pages 407-437.
    8. Douglas Almond & Hongbin Li & Shuang Zhang, 2019. "Land Reform and Sex Selection in China," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 127(2), pages 560-585.
    9. Kenli Schoolland, 2012. "The China Model: Is It A Golden Formula?," Economic Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(2), pages 88-90, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zhou, Yang, 2018. "Do ideology movements and legal intervention matter: A synthetic control analysis of the Chongqing Model," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 44-56.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dierk Herzer & Holger Strulik & Sebastian Vollmer, 2012. "The long-run determinants of fertility: one century of demographic change 1900–1999," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 17(4), pages 357-385, December.
    2. Jones, C.I., 2016. "The Facts of Economic Growth," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 3-69, Elsevier.
    3. Gianfranco DI VAIO & Michele BATTISTI, 2010. "A Spatially-Filtered Mixture of Beta-Convergence Regression for EU Regions, 1980-2002," Regional and Urban Modeling 284100013, EcoMod.
    4. Youngho Kang & Byung-Yeon Kim, 2018. "Immigration and economic growth: do origin and destination matter?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(46), pages 4968-4984, October.
    5. repec:zbw:rwidps:0030 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Vieira, Flávio & MacDonald, Ronald & Damasceno, Aderbal, 2012. "The role of institutions in cross-section income and panel data growth models: A deeper investigation on the weakness and proliferation of instruments," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 127-140.
    7. Cooray, Arusha, 2011. "The role of the government in financial sector development," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 928-938, May.
    8. Cécile Couharde & Rémi Generoso, 2015. "Hydro-climatic thresholds and economic growth reversals in developing countries: an empirical investigation," EconomiX Working Papers 2015-26, University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX.
    9. Kutuk, Yasin, 2022. "Inequality convergence: A world-systems theory approach," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 150-165.
    10. Iamsiraroj, Sasi, 2016. "The foreign direct investment–economic growth nexus," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 116-133.
    11. Guohua Feng & Jiti Gao & Fei Liu & Bin Peng, 2024. "Estimation and Inference for Three-Dimensional Panel Data Models," Papers 2404.08365, arXiv.org.
    12. van de Klundert, T.C.M.J. & Smulders, J.A., 1991. "Reconstructing growth theory : A survey," Other publications TiSEM 19355c51-17eb-4d5d-aa66-b, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    13. Tung Liu & Kui-Wai Li, 2008. "Revisiting Solow’s Decomposition of Economic and Productivity Growth," Working Papers 200805, Ball State University, Department of Economics, revised Dec 2008.
    14. Fofack, Hippolyte, 2012. "Accounting for gender production from a growth accounting framework in Sub-Saharan Africa," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6153, The World Bank.
    15. Blanco, Luisa & Grier, Robin, 2012. "Natural resource dependence and the accumulation of physical and human capital in Latin America," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 281-295.
    16. Jian-Guang Shen, 2002. "Democracy and growth: An alternative empirical approach," Development and Comp Systems 0212002, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Simplice A. Asongu & Joseph I. Uduji & Elda N. Okolo-Obasi, 2020. "Drivers and persistence of death in conflicts: global evidence," Working Papers 20/066, European Xtramile Centre of African Studies (EXCAS).
    18. Johannes W. Fedderke & John M. Luiz, 2005. "Does Human Generate Social and Institutional Capital? Exploring Evidence From Time Series Data in a Middle Income Country," Working Papers 029, Economic Research Southern Africa.
    19. Aysit Tansel & Nil Demet Güngör, 2016. "Gender Effects of Education on Economic Development in Turkey," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Nadereh Chamlou & Massoud Karshenas (ed.), Women, Work and Welfare in the Middle East and North Africa The Role of Socio-demographics, Entrepreneurship and Public Policies, chapter 3, pages 57-86, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    20. Ying Xu, 2009. "How does financial system efficiency affect the growth impact of FDI in China?," Asia Pacific Economic Papers 383, Australia-Japan Research Centre, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    21. Günther Rehme, 2007. "Education, Economic Growth and Measured Income Inequality," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 74(295), pages 493-514, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    one-child policy; labor shortage; China; Malthusian;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J11 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Demographic Trends, Macroeconomic Effects, and Forecasts
    • J18 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Public Policy
    • O1 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development
    • O10 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - General
    • P2 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist and Transition Economies
    • P20 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist and Transition Economies - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:79795. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.