Friday, April 29, 2011

Declining Chinese Birth Rate Could Doom One-Child Policy

Declining Chinese Birth Rate Could Doom One-Child Policy - ScienceInsider: Preliminary results from China's census, released today at a press conference in Beijing, reveal a population that is older, rapidly urbanizing, and growing more slowly, with a widening gap between male and female births. Those demographic changes, combined with comments Tuesday by President Hu Jintao, suggest the country's controversial one-child policy is under review and may be, at least in its current form, on its way out.

The census results reveal China's population grew 5.8% since 2000, from 1.27 billion to 1.34 billion. That's a significant slowdown from a rate of 11.7% in the 2000 census. At the same time, the proportion of Chinese ages 14 and under has fallen to 16.6%, compared with 22.9% in the previous census. Those statistics point to a fertility rate below 1.5 children per couple.

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