Question 1.
Under demographic transition theory, countries transition from high death and high birth rates to low death and low birth rates, as the country’s economy develops. The transition of death and birth rates is divided into four stages:
Pre-Industrial Stage
Societies have high death and birth rates in the first stage of pre-industrial stage.
As both death and birth rates are high, population growth is slow and majority of the population is young as despite several births, few manage to live for long. In the pre-industrial society, children tend to operate as an economic benefit for the families, which reinforces the high birth rates.
Industrial Revolution Stage
As countries start industrializing, death rates start to decline rapidly. Declining death rate is caused by improved health and sanitation and better food production. As death rates decline and birth rates are high, the result is an explosion in population. In this stage, population grows as more people are born and more live longer lives. The decreased death rate changes the population’s age structure.
Post-Industrial Revolution Stage
In the post-industrial stage, the rate of birth rates decrease and it balances the decreasing death rates. Falling birth rates also coincides with several other economic and social changes, like improved access to higher wages, contraception, commercialization of agriculture, urbanization, reduces the value of children's employment, and improved parental investment in children’s education. As birth rates are falling, the population’s age structure changes again and families have lesser children, which decreases the youth dependency ratio.
Stabilization Stage
At this stage, the population growth stage starts to stabilize as falling death and birth rates align. In a few cases, birth rates might even drop below the replacement level that leads to a shrinking population. In developed countries, death rates might increase slightly or remain consistently low, because of lifestyle diseases caused by high obesity, low exercise levels and an aging population.
Question 2.
One of the main causes of implementing one child policy was to bring the population of the country under control. According to Chinese government, the policy has helped them to prevent 400 million births and eased their population worry. The one child policy has also helped to stabilize the Chinese economy as the decrease in population has helped China to spend on welfare, education, and healthcare. Due to high population, China struggled to provide jobs to the majority of their population and the one child policy came in handy to reduce the poverty rates. The policy has managed to motivate couples to comply with the policy as they get interest free loans, longer maternity leave and subsidies on housing and education. Another major advantage has been the reduced fertility rate as couples are having only one child and majority of the population is supporting the one child population.
The one child policy has also brought several disadvantages for China; one of them is the unhealthy male-female ratio that has led to a greater male population and a gender imbalance in the Chinese society. Also, due to the one child policy abortion and infanticide rates have climbed. As couples can have only one child, they prefer to have a boy, leading to several abortions and infanticide when they find out they are having or had a girl.
Another major problem has been the creation of the Little Emperor Syndrome as being the only child increases the resources and attention leading to obesity, overweight, and lazy children who are pampered by parents. Also, being the only child increases the pressure as parents have huge expectations from them and they are the only ones who can take care of aging parents. Finally, birth tourism has also increased as people from all over the world flock to China for adoption unneeded babies.
