Key Issue #4

Thomas Malthus was one of the first to see the drastic increase of the human population and worry about how it may affect future generations. He argued that the human population would get so big that there would not enough food to feed the population. However, he never thought about the technology that would be produced between his time and now. In today's world we have harvesters, planes, and an industrialized society that helps produce enough food and supplies to support the human population. Many others have had their own ideas about this subject. Julian Simon argued that our resources will grow with time, which was proven correct. He also believed that the human mind was the ultimate resource. Esther Bosenup believed that population growth spurs technological innovation. Karl Marx believed that moral restrain was not the only acceptable preventive check. With the rapid increase of the human population over the past century, more and more countries are trying to find ways to decrease their population. Countries such as China only let parents have a child if they have a permit, however; couples that want to have a second child must pay a family-planning fee. Countries are also trying to get more and more women in schools so that they will learn employment skills and gain more economic control over their lives. These countries are slowly having more death rates than birth rates. Because of these country's populations declining, scientists think that a new stage should be made called stage five. This is when after the crude birth rate is equal to the crude death rate, the crude birth rate starts to decline more while the crude death rate stays the same. This causes the country's overall population to decrease and the world's population to decrease.

Has China's one-child policy worked?

In the first of a series of pieces on China's one-child policy, the BBC's Michael Bristow looks at whether the country's controversial regulations are working. Some parents in China are happy with one child China's family planning policy has prevented 400 million births, officials say. Since the regulations were introduced in 1978, China has kept its population in check using persuasion, coercion and encouragement. And it looks likely that, nearly 30 years after the policy was first introduced, it will not be relaxed to allow couples to have more children. Many Chinese and foreign academics believe this is a mistake and will result in a number of serious demographic problems in the future. At a press conference earlier this year, Chinese officials were keen to declare the controversial policy a success. "Because China has worked hard over the last 30 years, we have 400 million fewer people," said Zhang Weiqing, minister in charge of the National Population and Family Planning Commission. "Compared with the world's other developing countries with large populations, we have realised this transformation half a century ahead of time." A team of independent Chinese and foreign academics, who this year completed what they say is the first systematic examination of the policy, agree that China has managed to limit its population growth. But team leader Wang Feng, of the University of California, Irvine, says this reduction is mainly due to a fall in the fertility rate in the 1970s, rather than any more recent initiatives. It wouldn't matter what my financial situation was or what the government regulations were, I'd still only want one child Zhao Hui, mother During the 1970s, China began encouraging delayed marriages, longer intervals between births and fewer children. "The total fertility rate - the number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime - was reduced from over five to slightly over two," Prof Wang says. All this happened before the current family planning policy was introduced in 1978. 'Too busy' The fall in fertility rates is also, at least partly, due to improving social and economic circumstances. In other East Asian countries, such as Thailand and South Korea, modernisation has led to women having fewer children, and yet these countries do not have strict family planning policies. But Professor Wang does admit that China's family planning policies since 1978 have helped reduce the fertility rate further and contributed to a change in attitudes. "A lot of people simply don't want that many children. People have accepted the policy," he says. This is particularly true in urban areas, where most couples interviewed by the BBC say they are happy with just one child. Beijing mother-of-one Zhao Hui, who has a four-year-old daughter called Zhang Jin'ao, says she has never wanted more than one child. "One child is enough. I'm too busy at work to have any more," says the 38-year-old, who works in the housing sector. "It wouldn't matter what my financial situation was or what the government regulations were, I'd still only want one child," she adds. Most of her friends, she says, think the same way. Forced abortions But there is a more sinister aspect to this policy, which is sometimes employed to make women less willing than Ms Zhao accept the rules. Activist Chen Guangcheng was sent to prison last year for exposing what he says were over-zealous health workers in Linyi city, Shandong Province. China has rejected calls to change its one-child policy He says they illegally forced women to have late-term abortions and be sterilised. China also faces profound and widespread demographic problems because of its family planning rules, according to some. Chinese officials say the current fertility rate is between 1.7 and 1.8 births per woman, well below the 2.1 births needed to keep the population at a stable level. Overseas experts dispute this figure; they say the fertility rate is even lower and stands at 1.5. This will result in an increasing proportion of older people, a smaller workforce to look after them and a disproportionate number of boys to girls. There are other problems too. China might have restricted its population growth, but this has not always helped solve wider problems, as was envisaged when the policy was first introduced in 1978. Reducing the number of people, for example, does not automatically help the environment, as China has found. Prof Wang says the policy needs to be relaxed if China is to solve some of these problems. There are at least a few people inside China who agree with that assessment. During this year's parliamentary session in March, 29 members of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, a government advisory body, suggested allowing couples to have two children. But that suggestion will probably fall on deaf ears, at least until the end of the government's current five-year plan, which ends in 2010. At the press conference earlier this year, Minister Zhang said there was not the "slightest doubt" about the need to continue with the policy. China might face serious consequences because of that attitude in the not-too-distant future.