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DEALING WITH CHINA'S FUTURE POPULATION DECLINE: A PROPOSAL FOR REPLACING LOW BIRTH RATES WITH SUSTAINABLE RATES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2009

SHIXIONG CAO  and
XIUQING WANG
SHIXIONG CAO*
Affiliation:
College of Soil and Water Conservation, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing, P. R. China
XIUQING WANG
Affiliation:
College of Economics and Management, China Agricultural University, Beijing, P. R. China
*
To whom correspondence should be addressed: [email protected]
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Summary

Decreasing population levels due to declining birth rates are becoming a potentially serious social problem in developed and rapidly developing countries. China urgently needed to reduce birth rates so that its population would decline to a sustainable level, and the family planning policy designed to achieve this goal has largely succeeded. However, continuing to pursue this policy is leading to serious, unanticipated problems such as a shift in the country's population distribution towards the elderly and increasing difficulty supporting that elderly population. Social and political changes that promoted low birth rates and the lack of effective policies to encourage higher birth rates suggest that mitigating the consequences of the predicted population decline will depend on a revised approach based on achieving sustainable birth rates.

Type
Short Report
Information
Journal of Biosocial Science , Volume 41 , Issue 5 , September 2009 , pp. 693 - 696
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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