China's one child policy

I read an interesting article some time ago in a newspaper. I had already heard about this theme but I did not know which effects it would have on the population and why it had been introduced - I am talking about "China's one child policy".

The official program initiated in the late 1970s by the central government of China. The rationale for implementing the policy was to reduce the growth rate of China's enormous population. Since the Republic had been established in 1949, China promoted the use of birth control and family planning. In the years after 1949 it was voluntarily - everybody could decide on their own whether they wanted to have one child or two or three children. In the late 1970s China approached the one-billion mark and the government decided to implement a law reducing the number of new born children. Beforehand families with only one child had certain advantages. The education of their child was free as well as health care and they had to pay lower taxes.

Those who had two or more children were punished in a certain way. They even had to pay higher taxes and were not supported by the government at all. Many families, especially men, wanted to have a boy to carry on the name of the family. As a result of this wish many girls were left on the streets or even killed. A statistic shows that about 90% of all aborted are female. The result of the policy has been a general decline in China's birth rates. The policy brought along another problem. The gap between the number of females and males widened and there are not enough girls for marriage available now.