The Population Averted By China’s Birth Restrictions, 1971-2060: Estimates, Nightmares, and Reprogrammed Ambitions Daniel Goodkind Independent Researcher, Arlington VA Version – April 5, 2016

Paper prepared for presentation at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America. Washington DC. March 31. Summary China launched an unprecedented program to control its population in 1971, convinced that this was its key to prosperity and the dream of restoring long-lost global power. Expert demographers dismiss the official estimate of 400 million births averted by this program as greatly exaggerated, yet neglect to present estimates of their own. I develop such estimates through counterfactual projections based on fertility declines in other countries. As of 2015, China’s averted population was likely at least 390-510 million. The lower estimate is based on Vietnam, China’s best national comparator, and the higher estimates is based on a 16-country comparator proposed by critics of the official estimate. Due to excess fertility and population momentum in the counterfactuals, by 2060 the averted population is projected to grow to at least 730-900 million. India’s fertility transition implies a total Chinese population of 2.3 billion in 2015 and 3.3 billion by 2060, conjuring the nightmare that spawned the one-child decree in 1979. Most of China’s averted population can be attributed to that decree. Moreover, the counterfactual projections and international comparisons of fertility and income both suggest that if China had not harshly enforced a norm of 1.5-children per woman over the past quarter century, most mothers would have had 2 children, half a birth higher than observed. These findings reaffirm the preeminent role of China’s 45-year government intervention in reprogramming parental preferences, accelerating the demographic transition, and reducing population, the planetary impact of which will reverberate for decades.

Disclaimer - This research is a revision of a Working Paper in Demography (Goodkind, 1992). The paper reflects the views of the author alone. It does not represent the views of any other institution or organization.

1 Introduction China launched an unprecedented program to control its population in 1971, convinced that this was its key to prosperity and the restoration of long-lost global power (Tien, 1991; Banister, 1987; Aird, 1990; Scharping, 2003; White, 2006; Greenhalgh, 2008). In pursuit of this “Chinese dream” (The Economist, 2013), the ensuing decades witnessed cycles of birth quotas, enforcements, incentives, and loopholes. By the mid 1970s most parents were limited to two children, followed in 1979 by a quota of one child only. In the mid 1980s, a pivotal loophole allowed most rural couples a second child if their first was a daughter, a programmed norm of 1.5 children (Gu et al., 2007) enforced for over a quarter century through crushing financial penalties and other means (Xinhua, 1991). After another major loosening in 2013 (Xinhua, 2013), China lifted all one-child restrictions in the fall 2015 (Xinhua, 2015). So, how much smaller is China’s population as a result of its 45 years of birth restrictions? A vast audience will ask this question in the coming decades – government officials, climate and environmental scientists, other scholars and researchers, students, the media, and the general public – all of whom will look to demographers for an answer. Given China’s colossal footprint as a demographic billionaire (Tien, 1983), no policy intervention in history has done more to reduce the earth’s human population, and no single statistic better summarizes its impact. Yet the demographic impact of China’s birth restrictions – a question for the ages – has been conspicuously neglected. Population specialists dismiss official claims that the program averted 400 million births as greatly exaggerated (Greenhalgh, 2010; Cai, 2010; Wang et al., 2013; Basten and Jiang, 2014 Whyte, et al., 2015), yet they provide no estimates of their own. The neglect may be due to a preoccupation with eliminating one-child restrictions (Greenhalgh, 2003; Gu and Wang, 2009; Hvistendahl, 2010; Gu and Cai, 2011). Now that this bitter policy battle is over, the collateral damage to science has been exposed. In recent testimony before the U.S. Congress, Eberstadt (2015, p. 4) ruefully observed that “Strange as this may sound, demographers and population specialists have yet to offer a plausible and methodologically defensible estimate of just how much this extraordinarily ambitious and ruthless adventure in social engineering has actually altered China’s population.”

2 This paper seeks to redress that strange and yawning gap in knowledge. Its goal is neither to defend nor criticize the policy choices China made, but rather to estimate their demographic impact in a reliable way. In order to do so, the first consideration is when to begin (and end) the reckoning of the averted population. The more formidable challenge is to justify, among the countless choices available, what China’s fertility history might have looked like in the absence of the policies it chose. I estimate China’s averted population since 1970 through counterfactual projections based on fertility declines in other countries. As of 2015, China’s averted population likely numbered at least 390-510 million. The lower estimate is based on Vietnam, an ideal national comparator, and the higher estimate borrows a 16-country comparator hand picked by critics of the official estimate. By 2060, the averted population is projected to grow to 730-900 million. A counterfactual based on India – Asia’s other population billionaire – provides high ceiling estimates conjuring the nightmare that led to the one-child decree in 1979: a total Chinese population of over 2.3 billion in 2015 and 3.3 billion by 2060. Although China’s fertility fell sharply in the 1970s prior to the one-child decree, the projections imply that most of the averted population is due to that decree. Moreover, international comparisons of fertility and income herein cast doubt on the recent consensus that socio-economic progress was the main element that drove China’s fertility to very low levels. All evidence suggests that if China had not imposed draconian penalties to enforce a national norm of 1.5-children per couple for the last 25 years, most mothers would have had two children, half a birth higher than observed. Thirty years after Wolf (1986) served up a similar tonic to the field, I reaffirm the preeminent role of China’s government intervention in reprogramming parent’s preferences, accelerating the demographic transition, and reducing its population.

Prior Estimates and Debates – The Quest for the Right Projection Population projections have anchored debates at every major transition in China’s birth planning program. The dominant belief in the 1950s and 1960s that a large and growing population was China’s key for amassing wealth and power was eventually upended by projections of its population hurtling out of control (Tien, 1983). China reversed

3 course in the early 1970s, launching a program known as later-longer- fewer that promoted later marriage, longer birth intervals, and fewer children. By the mid 1970s this program evolved into a two-child policy, although opinions vary as to whether that quota was voluntary or coercively enforced.1 In any case, under this program China’s total fertility rate (TFR) plummeted from almost six births per woman in 1970 to below three by the late 1970s. Even so, Song and Li (1980) projected that if China’s TFR remained at 3 births per woman (a plausible upper bound among the alternate scenarios they considered), its population would top 3 billion by 2050 (Tien, 1991; Scharping, 2003, Greenhalgh, 2008). To avoid what they saw as a potential nightmare, central policymakers enacted the one-child decree in 1979.2 Counterfactual projections have also been central to the work of those exploring less draconian alternatives to one-child quotas. Among the earliest of these, Liang (1979, 1985) proposed a two-child limit with late marriage and wide birth spacing. Bongaarts and Greenhalgh (1985) developed formal variants of Liang’s proposal to show that it could keep China’s population under the official target of 1.2 billion by the year 2000 (for other counterfactual projections, see Banister (1987) and Tien (1991) ). Policymakers surprised everyone in the mid 1980s by relaxing the policy in a different way. To accommodate strong rural son preference, they enacted a loophole allowing most rural parents a second child if the first was female. The resulting national norm of 1.5- children (Gu et al. 2007) lasted more than a quarter century, resulting in a population of 1.27 billion in 2000, modestly above the official target. The use of counterfactual projections to estimate the demographic impact of China’s fertility restrictions can be traced as far back as 1980, when 56 million births were said to have been averted during the 1970s (Guangming Ribao, September 4 1980; cited in Tien, 1991, p. 222). A

1 Some experts propose that later-longer-fewer was largely voluntary (Hesketh et al., 2005; Basten and Gu, 2013), enjoyed popular support (Zhao, 2015), or was facilitated by long exposure to collectivist concerns (Tien, 1991). Others stress its coercive elements (Mosher, 1984; Lavely and Freedman, 1990; Whyte et al., 2015). 2 Greenhalgh (2008, cover jacket) casts Song and Li as leaders of a “small group of aerospace engineers [who] hijacked the population policymaking process and treated people like missiles,” a conspiratorial tale rejected by other critics who note that “the one-child policy came from leaders within the Party, not from scientists who offered evidence to support it (Liang, 2007)” (Wang et al., 2013, p. 119, footnote 6).

4 decade later, a flurry of estimates appeared. Zhao (1991) calculated 400 million births averted between 1970 and 1990 based on the assumption that China’s TFR of 5.8 in 1970 had otherwise remained constant. A more moderate figure of 200 million births averted between 1971 and 1990 was offered by Peng Pei Yun (Zhang and Yang, 1992), former director of China’s National Commission for Population and Family Planning (NCPFP) – the government body tasked with implementing the birth planning program – although it is not clear how that statistic was derived. Goodkind (1992) presented even lower estimates for 1971- 1990 based on fertility declines elsewhere in Confucian Asia. His central estimate of 110 million averted births was biased downwards by comparators that were far more urbanized and economically advanced than China (Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan), although a higher estimate of 155 million was also offered based on fertility in Vietnam. In the late 1990s, the NCPFP commissioned a study that determined 338 million births averted by China’s fertility restrictions between 1970 and 1998 (Yang et al., 2000). A few years later, that estimate was pegged at 400 million based on back-of-the–envelope extrapolations (Wang et al., 2013), a figure embraced by the NCPFP as an emblem of the program’s success. Leading experts dismiss this statistic as a gross exaggeration. Greenhalgh (2010, p. 112) advises that it “be taken with a large grain of salt.” Cai believes such “boasts” (2010, p. 420) to be deceptive, a “rewriting of China’s fertility reduction history” (quoted in Olesen, 2011). Wang et al. (2013: p. 126) label it “misinformation.” Basten and Jiang (2014: p. 502) mock its veracity by calling it a “‘fact’,“ hung within quotation marks. Most recently, Whyte et al. (2015; p. 158) declare the estimate of 400 million to be “entirely bogus.” Why the increasingly caustic tone of criticism? Some complain that official statements attributing 400 million averted births to the one- child decree (e.g., People’s Daily, 2011) are misleading – as is well known, the steepest decline in China’s fertility occurred during the later-longer-fewer era of the 1970s which preceded that decree (Wang et al., 2013). Elsewhere, critics argue that the one-child decree itself averted no more than 200 million births (Wang and Cai, 2010),3 yet

3 This estimate appeared in a Chinese-language journal (Wang and Cai, 2010). The counterfactual assumes that China’s TFR was fixed at 2.75 since 1979. In a critique of the official estimate two years later, the authors do not cite their earlier estimate

5 neither they nor other critics indicate the impact of the birth planning program overall (Eberstadt, 2015). This preoccupation with only the marginal effects of the one-child decree typified debates in its final years. Critics lobbying for its repeal argued that it was increasingly irrelevant (yet still harmful),4 while government authorities hoping to preserve the program trumpeted its impact (Olesen, 2011). In response to withering criticism, defenders of the official figure of 400 million acknowledge that it does not refer to the marginal impact of the one-child decree. 5 Instead, it refers to the impact of the birth program since it began in 1970 when the TFR was 5.8 and there was more downward headroom in which to observe the program’s effects (ibid.). Yet critics dismiss even this as an exaggeration, for reasons to be explained shortly.

of 200 million and seem to reject even that as an overestimate: “If the one-child policy did not achieve its goal of preventing hundreds of millions of births …why have so many … urged that it be phased out?” (Wang et al., 2013, p. 123). 4 Around 2002, scholar advocates resolved to eliminate all one-child restrictions (Hvistendahl, 2010), an agenda that attracted generous support (MacArthur Foundation, 2005, p. 46; 2008, p. 40). The conflicting narratives that resulted are typified by a comment published just after the lifting of one-child restrictions. Zhao (2015; abstract) opens with the claim that it was “urgent to abandon this policy” then proceeds to argue that the policy was nearly irrelevant at the time it was lifted.

5 Critics interpret official statements that attribute 400 million averted births to the one-child policy to be deliberately deceptive, but descriptive ambiguities abound in this literature. For instance, a literal translation of the Chinese title of Wang and Cai (2010) is ”How could China be short 400 million births?” but the English title was enhanced to read “How could China’s one-child policy have averted 400 million averted births over the last 30 years?” A more general concern is that observers often presume that China’s birth planning program began with the one-child decree and that one-child limits were universal for decades afterwards. Experts who use the phrase ‘one-child policy’ in their work (e.g., see titles of Greenhalgh, 2003, 2008) share responsibility for such misunderstandings. Universal one-child restrictions ended in the mid 1980s and local policies since then have been quite diverse (Short and Zhai, 1998; Scharping, 2003; Gu et al., 2007; Greenhalgh, 2008).

6 Three Comparators for Estimating China’s Averted Population Vietnam – The Ideal National Comparator (and a Neglected One) China provides an important model for understanding Vietnamese history, politics, and society (Woodside, 1988; Womack, 2006), and Vietnam provides an equally illuminative model for understanding China (Chan, Kerkvliet, and Unger, 1999). Womack (2009) is particularly direct about this: “There is no country more similar to China than Vietnam, and no country more similar to Vietnam than China.” Some of these striking similarities are summarized in Table 1. Along general cultural dimensions, both countries share a Confucian heritage, tonal languages, a similar written script (Vietnam used a form of Chinese characters prior to the 17th century), and even ways of eating (with chopsticks). Such similarities stem in part from their geographic contiguity – Vietnam’s northern region borders two Chinese provinces – Guangxi and Yunnan. Numerous historical parallels include ancient dynastic cycles as well as tumultuous changes during the 20th century: Communist Revolutions, cultural upheavals, and then sweeping market reforms under single party rule starting in the late 1970s and 1980s. In the wake of reforms, these two largely agricultural (yet well educated) societies both experienced rapid development. China’s world-leading growth enjoyed the limelight in recent years, yet Vietnam was close behind. China’s GNI per capita (PPP, current international dollars) quadrupled from $1K to $4K in just 13 years (1990-2003), whereas Vietnam broke past the same milestones in 16 years (1992-2008). In addition to these broad similarities, Vietnam is the only country to follow China’s lead in birth planning. In the late 1980s, Vietnam enacted a one-or-two child policy (Hull and Duong, 1992; Banister, 1992; Goodkind, 1995), the rationale of which was similar to China’s and which included hefty up front fines for violations. Indeed, population pressures were even greater in Vietnam than in China.6 Other parallels relevant to their birth planning systems include an early emphasis on surgical methods of fertility control (Goodkind, 1996) and strong son

6 The Red River Delta region in the north of Vietnam, where its birth program was most strictly enforced, is more densely populated than the Pearl River Delta of southern China (Le, Gillogly, and Rambo, 1993), and Vietnam’s national population density is more than double that of China (U.S. Census Bureau, 2015).

7 preference (Haughton and Haughton, 1995). Given all these similarities, the near total neglect of Vietnam as a comparator by China population experts is conspicuous.7 Vietnam is not, however, a carbon copy of China. Perhaps the most demographically relevant difference between them is the severe shortage of males in Vietnam resulting from the War of Reunification (1965-1975) and its aftermath. Spousal separation and excess male deaths during the war was followed by the incarceration of thousands of former Army Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) officers and excess international outmigration of males after the war. Around 1990, Vietnam had a 12 percent deficit of males at ages 25-54, whereas China reported a 9 percent surplus of males at these ages (U.S. Census Bureau, 2015). As a result, Vietnam’s fertility from the 1970s through the 1990s was pulled below where it otherwise would have been due to marriage squeeze (Goodkind, 1997), spousal separation (Bryant, 1998), and young widowhood (Hirschman, Preston, and Loi, 1995; Merli, 2000). This bias narrows the fertility gap between Vietnam and China (Figure 1), which in turn biases downwards estimates of China’s averted births based on the Vietnamese counterfactual.

India - The Billionaires Club of Two India provides another illuminating national comparator for China. Albeit a less ideal comparator due to its lower level of education (Table 1), India also implemented an aggressive family planning program in the 1970s. Moreover, as the world’s only other population billionaire – likely to surpass China as the world’s most populous country around 2025 – comparisons between the development of India and China have inspired considerable interest. One challenge to understanding these billionaires is that there are no population peers to compare them to and, barring some unforeseen unknown, there never will be. By 2021,

7 For instance, the concluding sentence in Whyte et al. (2015) states that it is a “damning indictment of the Chinese record that all her Confucian neighbors in East Asia [italics mine] achieved rapid declines to … sub-replacement fertility rates via robust economic growth supplemented by voluntary birth planning campaigns.” The subtle qualifiers italicized here seem designed to exclude China’s Confucian neighbors outside East Asia, which includes only two: Vietnam and Singapore.

8 the gap between the population of each of these countries and the third most populous country (the United States) will itself be a demographic billionaire. This special status invites a host of questions about the possible advantages and disadvantages of being a billionaire. These include the availability of huge domestic markets (Keefer, 2007) and the challenges (and rewards) of governing large and diverse populations vis a vis less populous neighbors.

The Critic’s 16-Country Comparator As noted earlier, critics dismiss the estimate of 338 million births averted by China’s birth planning program between 1970 and 1998 (Yang et al., 2000) as a gross exaggeration. Wang et al. (2013) contend that the counterfactual assumption of fertility decline in that study was too slow, biasing upwards the gap between the counterfactual and China’s actual fertility decline. They propose instead a counterfactual based on countries that had a similar crude birth rate (CBR) to that which China had in 1970 when its fertility restrictions began (35.5 births per thousand people). They identify 16 countries that had a CBR between 30 and 38 in 1970 (below), most of which are in Asia, South America, and Latin America: Albania, Brazil, Columbia, Costa Rica, Jamaica, North Korea, South Korea, Lebanon, Malaysia, Panama, Paraguay, South Africa, Thailand, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Venezuela. The critics score well on this point. Yang et al.’s (2000) counterfactual implied a marginal decline in China’s CBR, to 29 in 1990 and 28 in 1998, but the average CBR in the 16-country comparator fell much faster, to 26 in 1990 and 21 in 1998 (Wang et al., 2013, Table 1; Whyte et al., 2015, Figure 3). Surprisingly, however, the critics do not indicate China’s averted population based on their own fertility comparator. I thus provide such estimates below.

Population Projections for China and the Counterfactuals The following population projections begin with China’s population as of mid-year 1970 (814 million) distributed by age and sex. That

9 population is projected forward using cohort component methods based on annual estimates and projections of fertility and mortality. Mortality rates by age and sex are assigned in 1970, 1990, and 2010, followed by projected life expectancies by sex to 2060. The source of all the above parameters is the United Nations Population Division (UNPD, 2015). Net migration is assumed to be zero. The key population change parameters are listed in Appendix 1. As to China’s fertility, the critical element in our projections, a dizzying variety of estimates are available (Goodkind, 2011; Gu and Cai, 2011). Many such estimates are drawn directly from data reported in censuses, surveys, or registration without adjustment (Retherford, 2005; Gu et al., 2007; Zhao, 2015). Yet the completeness of fertility reporting in China is questionable because the potentially ruinous fines for out-of-quota births gives parents unique incentives to conceal them (Zeng et al., 1993; Scharping, 2003). To construct a historical fertility series for China, I turn to the two organizations offering country estimates based on demographic analysis of population change between censuses – the Population Divisions of the United Nations (UNPD) and the U.S. Census Bureau. I use the former for estimates from 1970-1989 and the latter for 1990-2015. Both choices result in more conservative estimates of China’s averted population because fertility in each of these sources is higher than most other sources, which narrows the fertility gap between China and each counterfactual.8 Population projections under the counterfactuals begin with the same projection for China and then substitute the fertility trajectories of Vietnam, India, and the 16-country comparator described earlier (Figure 1). For Vietnam and India, I use UNPD estimates that are cut and

8 Estimates from both sources emerge from cohort component projections, which ensure that the pieces of the demographic balancing equation fit together perfectly, albeit the picture is slightly different between them. Of the two sources, only the UNPD provides estimates of China’s fertility prior to 1990, which come in five-year chunks of time. Single-year estimates of China’s fertility from 1970 to 1989 (sources listed in Banister, 1987; Feeney et al., 1989) are scaled within each 5-year interval to match UNPD’s estimates, which in the 1980s are 5-10 percent higher. From 1990 to 2015, I use annual estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau’s International Data Base, which are higher than that of the UNPD in the late 1990s.

10 pasted so that fertility levels in 1970 begin at the same level as China had (a TFR of 5.8). The TFR in Vietnam actually reached 5.8 about three years later than China (1973), while India was there about three years ahead of China (1967). For the 16-country comparator, I use simple TFR averages in 1970, 1990, 2000, and 2015. By 2060, I assume that TFRs in China and each counterfactual will converge to 1.5. Averted births are implied whenever TFRs in China fall below those in the counterfactuals. Figure 1 suggests that China experienced two phases of aberrant fertility decline. The first was the 1970s and early 1980s during which the birth program was the primary driver of fertility decline (Wolf, 1986). Even so, by the late 1980s Vietnam’s fertility transition had almost caught up to China’s, for several reasons: China’s decision in 1980 to allow couples to marry at earlier ages (Feeney et al. 1989); pent-up demand for childbearing that had been lost during the 1970s; lax enforcements of existing regulations; and Vietnam’s own enactment of a two-child policy in the late 1980s. The second phase occurred after 1990 following China’s central decree of 1991 (Xinhua, 1991), which beefed up penalties and enforcements against birth planning violations (to be discussed later). China’s TFR between 1990 and 2015 averaged 0.5 below that of the Vietnam counterfactual and 0.7 below that of the 16-country comparator.

Estimates of China’s Averted Population, 1970-2060 The population averted by China’s birth planning program is estimated by comparing the total population projected under each counterfactual to that projected for China itself. Estimates are shown in Table 2. As of 2015, the cumulative averted population implied by the three comparators – rounded to tens of millions – ranges from 390 million (Vietnam), to 510 million (the 16-country comparator), to 1 billion (India.). The most reliable estimates likely range between the first two – the best national comparator (Vietnam) and the international comparator selected by critics of the official estimate of 400 million. China’s averted population has been growing, and is projected to continue to grow in the coming decades. Under all counterfactuals, the marginal increase of averted population was largest during the most recent 15-year interval 2000-2015. Indeed, this observation helps to

11 explain a puzzle. Based on the 16-country comparator, Table 2 suggests an averted Chinese population of 295 million as of 2000, below Yang et al.’s original estimate (338 million as of 1998) and confirming critic’s concerns that Yang et al.’s counterfactual fertility assumptions were too high (Whyte et al., 2015). Nevertheless, in just the last 15 years, the estimated averted population increased by another 213 million, bringing the total by 2015 to over half a billion. Two reasons account for this recent rapid growth in the averted population. In any society, the numbers of births depend on birth rates and the number of mothers of childbearing age. Counterfactual estimates of averted births in China reflect the same two factors – averted births to existing mothers (reflecting current differences in birth rates) and averted mothers (prior generations of averted births). Figure 2 shows the contribution of each factor based on the Vietnam comparator. In the 1970s and most of the 1980s, averted births result solely from differences in birth rates. By 1990 averted mothers (averted births in the 1970s) begin to appear. Averted births to existing mothers remains the primary explanation until 2000, when 51 percent of the 11.7 million averted births is due to averted mothers. Even though differences in fertility rates between the Vietnam counterfactual and China are projected to decrease in the future (Figure 1), “population momentum” in the counterfactual projection (China’s averted mothers) will continue to propel averted births forward. By 2060, the total population averted under the Vietnam and 16-country counterfactuals is projected to grow to 730-900 million (Table 2; Figure 3). Although a considerable portion of China’s fertility decline occurred during the 1970s, Figure 2 implies that most averted births as of 2015 were tallied after the one-child decree of 1979. That majority holds even if one begins reckoning the post one-child decree era as late as 1985. Although the initial wave of averted mothers in recent years is due to averted births during the later-longer-fewer era, the majority of averted births (to existing mothers) in the 1980s and beyond will also contribute to averted mothers in the future. Before proceeding, we might reflect on the magnitude of these figures. Between 2000 and 2015, actual births in China averaged 16 million per year (U.S. Census Bureau, 2015; United Nations, 2015). Under the Vietnam counterfactual (which suggests 11 million averted births

12 annually), the average would have been 27 million births. By 2060, the most conservative projection of China’s averted population is 730 million – more than double the current population of the third most populous country in the world (the United States). The counterfactual based on India likely provides high ceiling estimates given the lower level of education in India compared to China (Table 1). Nevertheless, the results conjure the frightening projection that inspired China’s one- child policy in 1979 (Song and Li, 1980): a Chinese population of 2.3 billion in 2015 and 3.3 billion by 2060. India’s fertility decline, had China experienced it, would have propelled China into the very nightmare envisioned by its policymakers (Figure 3).

What Drove China’s Fertility to Well-Below Replacement?: Attempts to Reprise the Primacy of Socio-Economic Progress These projections, in addition to providing estimates of China’s averted population, hook into other vital questions about the role of birth planning in China’s fertility decline. Thirty years ago, Wolf (1986) challenged a pair of authors who hypothesized that socio-economic progress was largely responsible for China’s extraordinary fertility decline in the 1970s (Whyte and Parish, 1984), a challenge that has since been broadly accepted as correct. However, that hypothesis has come back with a vengeance. Nearly an entire field now appears to believe that China’s rapid socio-economic progress was the key factor that drove its fertility from replacement to well below two birth per woman (Zhang and Zhao, 2005; Hesketh and Zhu, 2005; Wang, 2005; Gu et al. 2007; Greenhalgh, 2008; Morgan et al., 2009; Cai, 2011; Gu and Cai, 2013; Wang et al., 2013; Basten and Jiang, 2014; Whyte et al., 2015). Sen (2015) sums up the consensus view as follows: “the big fall in fertility in China … for which the one-child policy is often credited, has, in fact, been less related to compulsion and more to reasoned family decisions.” Similarly, Zhao (2015, p. 684) contends that the drop in China’s fertility to well below replacement was “driven increasingly by the effects of the remarkable social, economic, and cultural transformation of recent decades.”

13 However, a glance at the timeline of China’s fertility decline (Figure 1) casts doubt on such orthodoxy.9 China’s TFR plunged from 2.2 in 1990 to 1.5 by the mid-late 1990s (UNPD, 2015; Zhao, 2015), after which there was no further decline as China’s economy took off. Moreover, although Vietnam and China both surpassed similar income milestones after 1990 and had high levels of education (Table 1), their fertility fell to different floors matching the quotas they required – China to its 1.5- child norm (Gu et al., 2007) and Vietnam to its 2-child norm (Goodkind, 1995). So what exactly are the planks of evidence claimed to undergird the current orthodoxy? I briefly examine six of them below. To my knowledge, with the exception of the case of Yicheng county, none of these claims has been challenged before.

1. China’s Anomalously Low Fertility in the 1990s: The Global Income Picture Reconsidered Cai (2010; Figure 1) presented a scatter plot comparing fertility and income per capita in countries throughout the world in both 1975 and 2005. In 1975, China’s fertility was significantly lower than one would expect based on its income. In 2005, China’s TFR of 1.5 was also lower than expected, albeit not outside a 95% confidence interval, leading the author to conclude that “China should have reached a relatively low level of fertility even without the one-child policy” (Cai, 2010, p. 422). However, when China’s TFR first fell to 1.5 (between the mid-1990s and 2000)10 its income was much lower (Table 1). With the timeline shifted back just five years, the same scatter plot for the year 2000 confirms that China’s fertility was indeed unusually low given its income (Figure 4).11 Five other countries also had both low fertility and low incomes, but China was one of only two outliers that had low fertility amidst rapid economic growth (the other outlier was, conspicuously, Vietnam).

9 Merli and Morgan (2011: 519) also depart from the orthodox view of the primacy of socioeconomic factors, noting that “the transition to low fertility can be attributed in large part to the success of China’s birth planning policies.” 10China’s reported TFR first fell below 1.5 in 1995 (Goodkind, 2011) and its actual TFR fell below 1.6 between 1995 and 2000 (UNDP, 2015; U.S. Census Bureau, 2015; East-West Center, 2007; Cai, 2011). 11 If one plots this graph based on years closer to 1995 (when China’s reported TFR first fell below 1.5), China would appear even more anomalous.

14 The other four – Albania, Armenia, Moldova, and Ukraine –all had very low fertility amidst extended economic recessions in the wake of the breakup up the former Soviet Union (World Bank, 2002).

2. China & the Mini-Dragons – A Cross-wired Demographic Destiny? Experts often suggest that China’s very low fertility is not unusual when one considers the ultra-low fertility recently observed in other parts of East Asia (Hesketh and Zhu, 2005; Zhang and Zhao, 2005; Gu et al., 2007; Morgan et al., 2009; Wang et al., 2013; Whyte et al., 2015; Sen, 2015; Zhao, 2015). Given a common cultural heritage, it seems reasonable to expect that China might be destined to follow in the demographic footsteps of its less populous Confucian neighbors. But this conclusion appears to have cross-wired two historical events over the last 15 years – the world-leading economic growth in China and the descent to ultra-low fertility in Japan and the “mini-Dragons” of Asia (Jones et al., 2009). What observers often overlook is how less prosperous China was upon first reaching very low fertility (for an exception, see Merli and Morgan, 2011). Figure 5a shows that upon first reaching a TFR of 1.5, China’s income per capita was far below that of other Asian societies when they reached such low fertility – less than a third of that in Thailand, and an even smaller fraction of that in South Korea, Singapore, and Japan. Moreover, in three Asian societies where the TFR is still well above 1.5 (Vietnam, India, Mongolia), 2014 income per capita (dashed bars) is already above that which China had when it reached that threshold. Figure 5b flips the comparison, showing TFRs when income per capita first broke past $3,000 (China’s was 1.5). Vietnam is China’s closest comparator (once again), with a TFR of about 1.9. All other countries had fertility at or above replacement, half a birth higher than China had, when they surpassed the same income threshold. The dotted bars show estimated TFRs for countries that surpassed the $3,000 income threshold prior to 1990 (estimated by this author –the World Bank does not provide PPP data prior to 1990).12

12 I calculated the ratio in 1990 between GNI/capita (PPP) and GNI/capita (non- PPP). Since only non-PPP figures are available for years prior to 1990, I estimated the PPP value in those years by assuming the same ratio as in 1990.

15

3. China and Taiwan – Dueling Chinese Models of Fertility and Income Wolf’s (1986) critique of socio-economic explanations for China’s fertility decline in the 1970s and early 1980s featured comparisons between China and Taiwan. Figure 6 updates Wolf’s comparisons based on annual TFRs from 1980 to 2015 as well as income per capita at key junctures. From every comparative perspective, China’s fertility was aberrantly low. In the 1990s, China’s TFR was comparable to Taiwan’s even though its income was far lower. China’s TFR fell to 1.5 when income per capita was only $3,000, whereas Taiwan’s TFR was still at 2.5 (1980) when income per capita had already exceeded $4,000. When Taiwan’s TFR finally fell below 1.5 in 2001,13 its income per capita exceeded $27,000, nine times that which China had.

4. Preference Surveys from China’s Affluent East Coast Most parents in Shanghai and adjoining Jiangsu province who were permitted to have two children told survey takers that they intended to have only one, citing economic considerations as their main reason. Based on this finding, researchers have inferred that fertility will not increase much after the lifting of one-child restrictions (Zheng et al., 2009; Merli and Morgan, 2009). Although that inference may be correct, such responses do not reveal where fertility preferences came from. Even if they cite economic concerns regarding their current preferences, parents may not be able to distinguish how China’s birth policies contributed to shifting those preferences from having from two children to only one child. If one administered similar surveys to parents in Taiwan or Vietnam during similar phases of development, most would likely prefer (and proceed to have) two children (Figures 5 and 6). The view that fertility restrictions were not needed as a “safety valve” on fertility in these areas has also relied on comparisons of observed

13 Taiwan’s TFR actually fell below 1.5 in 1998, but this was a temporary fluctuation due to zodiacal birth preferences (Goodkind, 1993). Since the 1970s, Taiwan’s birth rates have regularly dipped in the Years of the Tiger (1974, 1986, 1998, 2010) and spiked in the Years of the Dragon (1976, 1988, 2000, 2012).

16 fertility and “policy fertility” (Gu et al., 2007) – the TFR required based on local regulations. For instance, Jiangsu’s reported TFR as of 2000 (1.0) was below the policy fertility allowed by the regulations (1.06; ibid., Table 1). Cai (2011) made a similar claim for Zhejiang, another affluent east coast province adjacent to Shanghai, citing a TFR estimate (1.04) well below what its policies allowed (1.47 children). However, other sources of provincial fertility lead to different conclusions (Appendix 2). To my knowledge, the most authoritative source is a collaboration between the East West Center and China’s National Bureau of Statistics (2007) which estimated fertility using own-children methods. However, neither this nor other sources shown in Appendix 2 adjust for underreporting of births. Many investigators believe that China’s national TFR in 2000 was between 1.5 and 1.6, about 10 percent above the East-West/NBS (2007) estimate of 1.40, so I apply the same correction factor to the East-West provincial estimates. The results cast doubt on claims that fertility in these provinces as of 2000 was well below what policies allowed – Zhejiang’s TFR (1.45) was likely just a hair below what its policies allowed (1.47) and Jiangsu’s TFR (1.22) was likely above what its policies allowed (1.06).14

5. The Curious Case of Yicheng County: A Two-child Policy, with a Catch When the one-child decree was first issued, Liang Zhongtang (currently director of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences) was a prominent objector who pleaded with central government authorities to allow a few local areas to implement less draconian birth quotas (Liang, 1985). Yicheng county in Shanxi province was among those allowed to do so and has implemented a (mostly) 2-child policy for the last three

14 Cai (2010) also argues for the secondary importance of policy factors based on a statistical analysis of counties in Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Policy implementation was measured through an indirect proxy - the proportion of residents having an agricultural hukou, a kind of internal passport determining which citizens should be exempt from one-child limits. Yet this proxy gives no indication of the strength of program enforcement, which varies sharply across counties and over time within counties (Short and Zhai, 1998). And even with better proxies, one cannot infer the national impact of China’s birth program based on its differential impact across localities.

17 decades. In the waning years of the one-child era, critics of the one- child decree touted Yicheng as an exceptional model for a new more relaxed national approach. Yicheng’s fairly low fertility was taken to indicate that socio-economic progress, rather than one-child limits, was sufficient to achieve below replacement fertility (Gu and Wang, 2009). Wei and Zhang (2014) recently challenged that view based on interviews with Yicheng officials, discussions with Liang Zhongtang himself, and their own statistical analysis. Among their many findings, state employees and residents of urban Yicheng were not exempt from one-child limits. Although rural couples could apply to have a second child, they had to have married at ages three years above the required minimum, waited 4-6 years after the first birth, and agreed that the mother be sterilized after the second birth. Officials were entitled to deny legitimate requests for a second child if the population of Yicheng exceeded annual targets established by central authorities (about 300,000 in 2000). For those having a third birth, financial penalties could be as ruinous as in any other part of China. In short, despite the looser quota, enforcement in Yicheng was still highly “punitive and coercive” (ibid., p. 105-109). Moreover, the claim that Yicheng’s low fertility was driven by socio-economic progress seems undermined by the fact that its fertility was well below the average for Shanxi province during the half century between 1949 and 2000, then slightly above that average from 2001-2009 (ibid., Figure 3). To their credit, those whose views were challenged by Wei and Zhang (2014) conceded that they “are in substantial agreement with [Wei and Zhang’s] conclusions about the Yicheng experience” (Whyte et al., 2015; p. 145).

6. A Bayesian Divination After scouring the literature, I found only one empirical argument that might be taken to support the belief that China’s TFR would have fallen to 1.5 even without the one-child decree. Investigators fit a Bayesian model to China’s fertility in the 1970s and, based on the result, concluded that “if … [China’s] rapid fertility decline in the 1970s offers any hint about the country’s future fertility trajectory … By 2010, fertility would have fallen to its currently observed level of around 1.5“ (Wang et al., 2013; p. 122; see also Whyte et al., 2015). But the very premise of this claim is misleading. It is not reasonable to suggest that

18 any trend model – Bayesian or otherwise – fit to the most unrepresentative decade of fertility decline in human history can provide a reliable forecast of birth rates 30 years later.

Back to the Preeminent Role of Birth Planning – The 1991 Crackdown, Exceptionalism, and the ‘Safety Valve’ Revisited The evidence reviewed above challenges current orthodoxy that socio- economic progress was the main cause of the plunge in China’s fertility to well-below replacement in the early 1990s. That premature plunge is better understood in light of enhanced enforcements of existing birth quotas, which are reviewed below. I then probe the deeper sentiments underlying the current orthodoxy – in particular, the reluctance of many experts to examine – or even acknowledge – the exceptional penalties imposed by the birth planning program. Lastly, in light of findings herein, I revisit the central policy question in this field – whether (and when) China’s birth program has been a “safety valve” on fertility.

The 1.5-child Norm and its Enforcement As noted earlier, China established a national norm of 1.5-children per family (Gu et al., 2007) by the late 1980s. Yet according to the 1990 census, fertility still remained above two births per woman (Scharping, 2003). Policymakers then enacted in 1991 a central decree that held local officials personally responsible for enforcing existing quotas (Xinhua, 1991). The revised system for evaluating the job performance of local officials was known as “one-veto down:” officials who failed to achieve pre-set population targets could be fired even if they otherwise performed well (Wei and Zhang, 2014). The revision gave officials incentives to enforce the rules and monitoring systems that had long been in place to prevent over-quota births.15 Couples needed to apply to have a child, a process similar to obtaining a driver’s license. And married women of childbearing age without authorization to have a

15 There were also positive incentives in place as well. Parents who complied with one-child quotas often received free education for their child, childcare subsidies, and even preferred access to housing.

19 child were monitored through a variety of means (Tien, 1991; Merli, 1998; Scharping, 2003; Greenhalgh, 2008) including local “granny squads” and, in some work units, wall charts listing the pregnancy status of female employees, evidence for which might be the provision of a used tampon (Demick, 2015). But perhaps the most significant change in the wake of the 1991 decree was for parents who proceeded to have an over-quota birth. Financial penalties for such violations (known as “social maintenance fees”) were increased, reaching two to three times average annual salaries in most provinces and, given new pressures on local officials, were more likely to be enforced. Since most citizens could not afford to pay such a fine all at once, they could choose a term for repayment, typically 7 or 14 years (Scharping, 2003), similar to a home mortgage. Such crushing penalties appear to have affected not only fertility (Figure 1), but childbearing preferences as well. Basten and Gu (2013, Figures 4 and 6) compiled results from 37 surveys of desired family size – mostly from provinces – over the last three decades. In surveys between 1983 and 1992, about 60 percent of parents on average said they wanted two or more children, followed by a sharp drop immediately after the 1991 decree to an average of under 40 percent. These findings are consistent with observations that local fertility preferences were affected by the intensity of enforcement of birth quotas (Merli and Smith, 2002). Based on anecdotal evidence in recent years, fines for violating birth quotas have increased further, reaching four to eight times average local salaries. Among the most celebrated cases of penalization was against film director Zhang Yimou, who was fined (and paid) more than US$1.2 million for having two over-quota births (The Associated Press, 2014). Fines for more typical citizens have been roughly comparable to the cost of raising a child to adulthood (about US$65 thousand; Bloomberg News, 2015), the imposition of which could wreck the financial future of a young couple, their children, and their extended families. Those promoting socio-economic explanations for China’s very low fertility neglect how those slowly evolving forces may be dwarfed by parental anxiety over the sudden imposition of fines of such magnitude. Among the few experts to evaluate the significance of such fines, Ebenstein (2011) estimated the relative financial value of daughters vs. sons.

20 The Reluctance to See China’s Birth Planning Program (or its Effects) as Exceptional The punitive aspects of China’s birth planning program mark China as exceptional (Mosher, 1983; Banister, 1987; Aird, 1990; Tien, 1991; Scharping, 2003; White, 2006; Greenhalgh, 2008) – no other country has imposed such draconian quotas, fines and enforcements. Earlier, we explored flaws in socio-economic explanations for China’s very low fertility. Here we consider some causes (and consequences) of the demotion of this exceptional context in recent studies of China’s fertility. One apparent cause of this demotion is the presumption that those who emphasize the program’s coercive aspects do so based on moral judgments. For instance, Greenhalgh (2003, p. 163) equates a focus on the unique aspects of China’s birth program with “Othering practices,” an invocation of “Orientalism” (Said, 1978) – prejudicial interpretations of cultural difference that creates a sense of superiority in the observer. Yet this appears to confuse such prejudices with simple comparative analysis. One can interpret China’s birth program to be uniquely coercive without judging its morality. Instead of attributing Orientalist prejudices to observers who emphasize the birth program’s uniqueness, it seems fairer to say that, through its own policies, China has Orientalized itself. The view that China’s birth planning program had unexceptional demographic effects also pervades recent literature on fertility estimation. Gu and Cai (2011), for instance, claim that “in the larger context of fertility transition, China is not an exception.” Such literature typically points at consistent estimates of low fertility reported in censuses and surveys to argue that fertility was truly well below replacement (ibid.; Morgan et al. 2009; Zhao and Chen, 2011). Those skeptical of such conclusions have been criticized for “thinking [that] lagged behind the rapid socio-demographic change” (Zhao, 2015, p. 682) or met with cavalier challenges: “The burden of proof has shifted to the skeptics.” (Morgan et al., 2009, p. 625) But evidence herein suggests that such criticisms are unjustified. Skepticism of socio- economic explanations for the fall in China’s fertility to very low levels seems reasonable based on international comparisons (Figures 4, 5, 6). What skeptics needed – particularly government authorities – was a satisfactory explanation of how to reconcile China’s massive birth

21 planning apparatus with consistent reports of low fertility. Faced with ruinous penalties for over-quota births, parents had three options – comply with local quotas, pay the penalties for unauthorized births, or try to conceal unauthorized births from statistical authorities (Zeng et al., 1993; Smith, 1994; Merli, 1998; Goodkind, 2011). The current orthodoxy seems most consistent with the first option – births were within quotas largely because of rapid socio-economic development. But this narrative leaves numerous questions unanswered. Given that China’s punitive system has given parents more incentive to conceal births than any other country, is it reasonable to presume that there was no underreporting at all? If childbearing was largely within required quotas, why were fines still so common (Wei, 2013; Basten and Jiang, 2014)? Were all transgressors resigned to pay fines of such magnitude, or did they never consider concealment? Such questions are regularly sidestepped because the punitive provisions of the birth planning program are rarely detailed and sometimes seem cleansed from consideration (Gu et al. 2007; Zhao and Chen, 2011). As a result, recent expositions have tended to propose two oversimplified and mutually exclusive possibilities – either that underreporting of births in China was substantial (taken to imply that fertility was not very low) or that fertility was indeed as low as reported (Hesketh et al., 2007; Morgan et al., 2009; Zhao, 2015). Goodkind (2011) showed this to be a false choice – one can make the case for low fertility in China without denying that sizeable reporting anomalies could still be present due to the punitive birth program. This is the kind of explanation that skeptical authorities might have found plausible had experts brought it to their attention.

The Safety Valve Hypothesis Reconsidered – How China’s One-Child Limit Made Itself Irrelevant Debates about China’s birth planning program have always revolved around its shaping of childbearing preferences and practices. For instance, did fertility fall to low levels (a TFR hovering around 1.5) in the 1990s due to the 1991 crackdown or did parents internalize such programmed norms? For years, central policymakers held to the former view – that birth restrictions were a “safety valve” on underlying preferences for more children, which would readily spring forth like a

22 jack-in-the-box the moment that valve was released. Most policy critics disputed that view, as noted earlier, claiming that very low fertility was primarily attributable to China’s rapid socio-economic progress. Available evidence casts doubt on both of these views. Critic’s claims are undermined by aforementioned evidence that fertility in China was half a birth lower than elsewhere in Asia upon reaching comparable levels of income (Figure 5b). And the official view that birth restrictions were still needed as a safety valve was dissolved by the tepid public response to a major new loophole in 2013, which allowed couples to have a second child if either husband or wife was an only child (Xinhua, 2013; Basten and Jiang, 2014). Some 11 million couples qualified for this new exemption, but by May 2015 only 1.5 million had applied for a second child. There is, however, another explanation for these findings that has been explored before: after the 1991 decree, the 1.5-child quota did provide a safety value on fertility, but after two decades of harsh enforcement parental preferences had already been reprogrammed in line with those quotas (Merli and Smith, 2002; Nie and Wyman, 2005; Merli and Morgan, 2011). The tepid reaction to the 2013 loophole and indifference to the lifting of all one-child limits in 2015 suggests that the program became a victim of its own success. Another reason for public indifference to the final demise of the one- child era is that, wittingly or not, central authorities stamped an expiration date on it two years earlier. The loophole of 2013 that granted exemption to any parent who was an only child was far more consequential than recognized. Given that one-child restrictions began in the early 1980s, the proportion of only-child adults reaching marital ages began to rise dramatically after 2000, particularly in urban areas. China did not, as has often been said, suddenly switch in 2015 to a 2- child policy. The 2013 loophole, combined with growing proportions of couples qualifying for that loophole, already gave China a “1.8”-child policy.16 If China’s TFR did not rise much past 1.6 births per woman under a 1.8-child limit, it is unlikely to do so under a 2-child limit.

16 This is an informal calculation based on prior TFRs in urban and rural areas. If 70 percent of parents in urban areas around 2013 were only children, then only 10 percent of urban couples were still subject to one-child limits (a 1.9-child norm). If 20 percent of rural couples were only children (and parents with a first born

23 Conclusion: On Science, Advocacy, and the Post One-Child Era Greenhalgh (2003; p. 166) launched a series of articles and books addressing population policy-making in China during the late 1970s by claiming that “ideas about China’s population problem … were actively fabricated by Chinese population scientists using numbers, numerical pictures (such as tables and graphs), and numerical techniques (such as projections)… .” This perspective, that China’s “virtual ‘population crisis’ ” was a misconstruction of “scientizing rhetorics” (ibid., abstract), seems to doubt that such concerns had much basis in reality, with a key objective of the author placed front and center: “to clear the way for fresh consideration of policy alternatives [to one-child restrictions]” (ibid., p. 166). In the last dozen years, this approach channeled the thinking of other population experts, who linked arms (often in the same forum) to question the necessity for, and demographic impact of, the one-child decree (Zhang and Zhao, 2005; Nie and Wyman, 2005; Gu et al., 2007; Morgan et al., 2009; Zheng et al., 2009; Cai, 2011; Gu and Cai, 2011;Wang et al., 2013; Basten and Jiang, 2014; Whyte et al., 2015; Sen, 2015; Zhao, 2015) as well as the entire birth planning program. This paper has counter-challenged that the resulting orthodoxy is itself a scientific misconstruction, more concerned with crafting strategies to eliminate one-child restrictions than with building basic knowledge. The boundaries between science and advocacy may be clearer now that the fuel for the latter is gone. One need not agree with the choices made by Chinese policymakers or the soundness of their scientific reasoning to appreciate that China’s demographic destiny in the absence of policy intervention was quite real. Both friends and foes of that intervention might reconsider the “awesome strength”(Lavely and Freedman, 1990, p. 365) of China’s “longest campaign” (White, 2006), without which its population as of 2015 likely would have been at least 390-510 million larger than it was – ranging well above the official estimate of 400 million and destined to hurtle higher still. Given population momentum and excess fertility in the alternate scenarios, China’s averted population is projected to grow to at least 730-900 million by 2060.

daughter were already exempt), then only a third of rural couples were still subject to one-child limits (a 1.7-child norm). Oddly, this implies tighter control on rural fertility than urban fertility, the opposite of what had existed in prior decades.

24 The world will probably never know again a policy intervention of such demographic consequence. The lower end of the ranges draws from a counterfactual projection based on fertility decline in Vietnam, the best national comparator for China, and the higher estimate is based on a 16-country international comparator chosen, ironically, by critics of the official estimate. Alternatively, if China had glided down India’s gradual path of fertility decline, its population would have mushroomed into the very nightmare that policymakers feared most on the eve of the one-child decree: a total Chinese population of 2.3 billion in 2015 and 3.3 billion in 2060. Although China’s fertility declined most steeply during the decade prior to the one-child decree of 1979, the projections suggest that most of the averted population by 2015 has accumulated in the era after that decree (Figure 2). Moreover, the one-child decree (and the evolving loopholes and enforcements which followed it) played a central role in the plunge from replacement to well-below replacement fertility. That plunge in the early 1990s preceded China’s two most torrid decades of economic progress, and fertility fell no further as prosperity rose. Although socio- economic progress contributed to preferences for smaller families in China, as it has everywhere else in the world, what drove China’s fertility to well-below replacement was likely the enhancement of a punishing birth planning program that did not exist anywhere else, with fines for unauthorized births ballooning to the size of a home mortgage. Readers looking for the simplest comparative takeaway might consider this. China deployed a national norm of 1.5 children per family (Gu et al., 2007) in the mid 1980s, and its TFR fell in line with that norm shortly after financial penalties were beefed up in 1991. In contrast, Vietnam called for a two-child limit in the late 1980s with far less severe penalties (Goodkind, 1995), and its TFR thereafter fell to a floor around 2 (Figure 1). Yet at that time China and Vietnam both broke past similar income milestones and had equally well-educated parents (Table 1). What was exceptional about China that caused its fertility to fall so far below replacement? Every comparative perspective examined herein points to the same conclusion: if China had not employed draconian penalties to enforce the national norm of 1.5 children over the past 25 years, most mothers likely would have had two births, half a birth higher than observed (Figure 1, Figure 5b, Figure 6). Put another way, half of

25 all couples had one less child than they would have had without the strict 1.5-child norm. If the lifting of remaining one-child restrictions in 2015 is followed by little or no elevation in China’s fertility, the main reason will likely be that prolonged enforcement of the 1.5-child norm accomplished what it intended to do – reprogram fertility preferences, reset the demographic transition, and reduce population size. Critics have voiced objections to China’s birth program for decades, culminating with a campaign by scholar advocates beginning in 2002 to eliminate one-child restrictions (Hvistendahl, 2010). Yet that policy ground on for more than a dozen years afterwards. Might the findings herein have handed advocates a wiser battle plan? Instead of lumping the one-child decree among China’s most “deadly errors” of the 20th century and dismissing official claims of its demographic impact (Wang et al., 2013) – a tactic that ensured the defensive resistance of a massive state bureaucracy as well as central policymakers – what if advocates had played a more neutral role as brokers of science (Pielke, 2007) and credited the birth planning program with more than was claimed? And instead of insisting that China’s fertility was driven to very low levels by socio-economic progress, what if they had suggested that enforcement of the 1.5-child norm was so successful in reprogramming fertility preferences that remaining one-child restrictions could be fully lifted? Might the triumph of good science (or rather, of advocacy built upon it) have been the full repeal of one-child restrictions well before 2015? And even if that approach failed too, could we at least be satisfied that the state of our science would be better than it is now? Findings herein also open out upon a wider frontier of questions and unknowns. For instance, China’s “strategic demographic initiative” (Tien, 1991) was intended to increase the welfare of its people, solidify the prestige of the ruling Party, and propel its development ahead of its neighbors. Did population policy intervention help to pull this “Chinese dream” (The Economist, 2013) closer to reality as its promoters hypothesized it would? As to the program’s economic impact, the answer is complicated by the fact that economists disagree about the extent to which fertility decline in general contributes to economic growth. Cai and Wang (2005) provide a generous assessment of that role, estimating that a quarter of China’s rising prosperity can be attributed to its rapid demographic transition. Wang and Mason (2005)

26 and Bloom et al. (2010) estimate that percentage to be more modest, closer to 15 percent and 8 percent, respectively. The projections here also invoke global Malthusian questions. In a 2011 Presidential Address to the Population Association of America (PAA), David Lam (2012) offered that the world survived a population bomb in the late 20th century because of its “extraordinary demographic history.” Two key features of that extraordinary history were the rapid growth in food relative to population and the decline in poverty. After re-jiggering Lam’s figures based on the counterfactual estimates of China’s population herein (not shown), I found that both worldwide measures likely would still have improved, but progress would have been slower depending on the scenario considered. Slower progress due to the population drag might have mothered other technological innovations in response (Boserup, 1965), but it is unclear whether it would have. Moreover, regardless of how well burgeoning human populations find ways to feed themselves, many other animal and plant species are not so fortunate. Becker (2013) reminds us, among other concerns, of the alarming planetary loss of biodiversity. Indeed, environmentalists have long viewed China’s birth program through a different lens than its critics (Brown, 1995). The number of species being extinguished each year seems directly related to the growth of the human population (Scott, 2008). If China had not embarked on its ambitious population policies, would that pace of extinction be even faster? And would China’s global quest for resources (Economy and Levi, 2014) to feed, clothe, and shelter its hundreds of millions of extra citizens be even more voracious than it is now? Observers will debate for decades to come how the world is different because of the fateful policy choices China made. All of these unfolding questions begin with measurements and alternate scenarios of China’s population growth. Demographers have the honor of lighting the way forward, for only they can navigate well through this specialized realm of statistics and relations. With accusations of “bad science” being flung so often at China’s birth planners in decades past, population experts must be extra careful to ensure that good science replaces it. Perhaps that ambition will be more readily achieved now that the era of one-child limits in China is officially, finally, behind us.

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33 Table 1. Comparisons Between China and Other Countries: Culture, Political History, Socio-economic Factors, and Reproduction

South Dimension China Vietnam India Korea Thailand Culture: Tonal language & close grammatical similarities Yes Yes No No No Confucian heritage Yes Yes No Yes No Chopsticks Yes Yes No Yes No Border With China -- Yes Yes No No

Political History: Last Emperor’s Final Year 1911 1945 NA 1910 Ongoing Communist Revolution Yes Yes No No No Single Party System Yes Yes No No No Market Reforms >1970s Yes Yes Yes No No

Education (2001)* Percent Adults Literate 85.8 92.7 58.0 97.9 95.7 Percent Youths Literate 97.9 95.4 73.3 99.8 99.0

Economic Factors* Inequality Gini * 37.0 35.6 33.6 NA 39.4 Year at 33% Urban 1997 2014 2015 <1980 2001 Year GNI/Capita at $1,000 current Intl PPP 1990 1992 <1990 <1990 <1990 $2,000 “ 1996 2000 2000 <1990 <1990 $4,000 “ 2003 2008 2009 <1990 <1990

Reproductive Factors Focus on Surgical Contraceptive Methods Yes Yes Yes No No Year TFR at 5.8* 1970 1973 1967 1964 1965 Strong Son Preference Yes Yes Yes Yes No Male Shortage (1970-90)* No Yes No No No

Punitive Birth Quotas? Yes - Yes - No No No Penalty - typical share of 2-7 2-7 income for violators* years months

*Sources: Education from UNDP (2003). Economic statistics from World Bank Databank (accessed Feb, 2016). Fertility (TFR) from the United Nations Population Division (2015 revision; interpolated). Male shortage from Goodkind (1996). Birth planning penalties from Scharping (2003), Goodkind (1995).

34 Figure 1. Total Fertility Rate in China and Counterfactual Scenarios, 1970-2060 6.0

5.0 India (1967)

16-Country Comparator (1970) 4.0 Vietnam (1973)

Phase 1 3.0 China (1970)

2.0 Phase 2

1.0

0.0 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050 2060

Notes – *For China, the annual TFR series 1970-1989 is drawn from Banister (1987) and Feeney and Yuan (1994). These estimates are adjusted within each five-year interval to match estimates provided by UNPD (2015). From 1990 to 2014, annual TFR estimates are drawn from U.S. Census Bureau (2015). The projection for China from 2015-2020 incorporates a slight bump up for a possible increase following the lifting of one-child restrictions. See text for further details. *For Vietnam and India, estimates come from UNPD (2015), which are provided in five-year intervals. These estimates were interpolated in order to center on years ending in zero and five, then spliced and pasted such that the TFR in 1970 matched that which China had (5.8). Years shown in legend parentheses indicate the actual year in which their TFRs were estimated to be 5.8. Given that Vietnam’s estimated TFRs from censuses and annual surveys (GSO, 2007) are consistently above UNPD estimates from the 1990s forward, an additional upward adjustment was made to UNPD estimates for 1990-95 to match official estimates, and then TFRs were interpolated between that interval and UNDP estimates for 2015. *For the 16-country comparator, TFRs were chosen to produce CBR estimates matching those in Wang et al. (2013) in 1990 and 1998. An additional TFR average was constructed for 2015. *All scenarios are presumed to converge after 2015 to a TFR of 1.5 by 2060. Sources: United Nations Population Division (World Population Prospects 2015); U.S. Census Bureau (International Data Base, 2015); Other Chinese sources listed in Banister (1987). Feeney and Yuan (1994).

35

Table 2. Population Projections for China Based on Its Own Fertility and Counterfactual Fertility Scenarios, and Estimated Averted Population, 1970-2060 (Numbers in Millions)

1970 1985 2000 2015 2030 2045 2060

China Total Projected Population – Actual & Counterfactual

China Actual 814 1,047 1,253 1,349 1,364 1,270 1,105

Vietnam 814 1,161 1,468 1,737 1,890 1,935 1,831

The 16* 814 1,180 1,548 1,858 2,052 2,107 2,008

India 814 1,245 1,773 2,346 2,829 3,161 3,255

China’s Cumulative Averted Population Under Counterfactuals

Vietnam NA 115 215 388 526 665 726

The 16* NA 133 295 508 687 837 903

India NA 198 520 996 1,465 1,891 2,150

China’s Marginal Averted Population (vs. 15 years before)

Vietnam NA 115 100 173 138 139 61

The 16* NA 133 162 213 179 150 65

India NA 198 321 476 468 426 259

36

*For details about the 16-country comparator proposed by Wang et al. (2013), see text.

Figure 2. Averted Births in China Every 5th Year Under the Vietnam Counterfactual, 1970-2060: Averted Births to Existing Mothers vs. Averted Mothers 16,000,000 Averted Mothers 14,000,000 Averted Births to Existing Mothers

12,000,000

10,000,000

8,000,000

6,000,000

4,000,000

2,000,000

0 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 2030 2035 2040 2045 2050 2055 2060

Note: Averted births to existing mothers relect differences in fertility rates between the counterfactual and China in each given year. Averted mothers refers to averted Chinese births in prior generations who will not become mothers themselves.

37

Figure 3. Population Projected for China Based on Its Own Ferility and Counterfactual Fertility Scenarios, - 1970, 2015, and 2060 (Numbers in Millions) 4000

3500

3000

2500 China

2000 Vietnam The 16

1500 India The Nightmare 1000

500

0 1970 2015 2060

Note: Projections from Table 2. The nightmare scenario was projected by Song and Li (1980).

38

Figure 4. Log GNI/Capita (PPP, International $) versus Total Fertility Rate in 2000 by Country (with 90% confidence interval)

8.00

7.00

6.00

5.00

4.00 India 3.00

2.00 Vietnam China 1.00 y = -1.02ln(x) + 12.08 R² = 0.547

0.00 100 1000 10000 100000

Source: World Bank DataBank (downloaded January, 2016)

39 Figure 5a. GNI/capita (PPP, International $) in Asia When Total Fertility Rate (TFR) Fell to 1.5 40,000 35,000 30,000 25,000 20,000 15,000 10,000 5,000 0 China Vietnam India Mongolia Thailand South Singapore Japan 2000 2009 Korea 1999 1990 1997

Note – ). The years in which the TFR reached 1.5 are indicated on the X axis. Dashed figures indicate 2014 GNI/Capita PPP (the TFR in these countries has yet to fall to 1.5).

Source – World Bank Databank (2016)

Figure 5b. Total Fertiliy Rate (TFR) in Asia When GNI/capita Reached $3,000 (PPP, International $) 3.0

2.5

2.0

1.5

1.0

0.5

0.0 China Vietnam .India Mongolia Thailand South Singapore Japan 2000 2005 2006 1995 Korea 1973 1973 1983

Note – Years in which GNI/capita reached $3,000 are indicated on the X axis. Dashed figures are estimated by the author (Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) statistics are only available starting in 1990 – estimates assume that the ratio of PPP and non-PPP GNI/capita statistics in each country prior to 1990 match those in 1990).

Source – World Bank Databank (2016)

40

Figure 6. Total Fertility Rates in China and Taiwan, 1980-2014, With GDP/Capita in Key Years 3.5

$309 3 1980 China

2.5 Taiwan $1,447 1993 2 $4,056 1980 $3,198 $13,244 2001 2014 1.5 $13,240 1993 $27,689 1 2001 $46,036 2014 0.5

0

Sources: GDP/capita (PPP, Intl $) for China and Taiwan: IMF World Economic Outlook (October 2015; data for Taiwan are not available from the World Bank). TFRs for China: see Figure 1. TFRs for Taiwan: Statistical Yearbooks of the Republic of China.

41 Appendix 1. Demographic Change Parameters Used for Population Projections for China and the Counterfactuals

TFR TFR TFR TFR Year Eo Both Sex IMR Both Sex China Vietnam The 16 India

1970 58.2 88.4 5.80 5.80 5.80 5.81

1975 63.5 63.9 3.67 4.94 5.20 5.57

1980 67.7 46.0 2.24 4.13 4.60 5.19

1985 68.9 41.3 2.66 3.46 4.00 4.83

1990 69.9 37.0 2.21 2.84 3.40 4.00

1995 71.8 30.3 1.78 2.18 2.78 3.60

2000 73.4 24.8 1.56 2.12 2.34 3.20

2005 74.3 21.7 1.55 2.06 2.18 2.93

2010 75.2 19.0 1.49 2.00 2.02 2.67

2015 75.9 16.7 1.60 1.94 1.86 2.40

2020 76.6 14.7 1.60 1.89 1.82 2.30

2025 77.2 13.0 1.50 1.84 1.78 2.20

2030 77.8 11.5 1.50 1.79 1.74 2.10

2035 78.4 10.1 1.50 1.74 1.70 2.00

2040 78.9 9.0 1.50 1.70 1.66 1.90

2045 79.4 8.0 1.50 1.65 1.62 1.80

2050 79.9 7.1 1.50 1.60 1.58 1.70

2055 80.3 6.3 1.50 1.55 1.54 1.60

2060 80.8 5.6 1.50 1.50 1.50 1.50

42 Appendix 2. Various TFR Estimates @2000: Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and China

TFR East-West

East-West TFR, with

Center & 10% TFR TFR NBS Upward Policy Fertility

Cai Gu et al. Gu et al. (2011) (2007) (2007) Adjustment (2007)

Zhejiang 1.04 1.20 1.32 1.45 1.47

Jiangsu 0.97 1.00 1.11 1.22 1.06

Excess in Zhejiang 0.07 0.20 0.21 0.23 0.41

China NA 1.40 1.40 1.54 1.48

Sources quoted:

Cai (2011) - TFRs: National Bureau of Statistics. 2003. The Complete Collection of National Provincial Population Census Data Assembly. Electronic Version. University of Michigan. China Data Center.

Gu (2007) - TFRs: National Bureau of Statistics. 2000. Highlights of Data from 2000: The Fifth National Population Census. Beijing. Internal Publications.

Gu (2007) - Policy fertility: calculated by the authors. This is the average quota allowed based on available loopholes.

East-West Center & NBS (2007) – TFRs from ASFR method: calculated by the authors.

43

44