Question

What are some of the differences between the population policies of China and India? What factors may have contributed to their success and failure? (Please answer in at least 300 words and do not copy and paste from another source).

Answer 1

In the world India and China are the two most populous countries. In 1970s, both the countries convinced that reduction in the growth of population was critical for eliminating rising poverty, decline in jobs and a poor literacy rate; thus instituted coercive population policies. China’s formulated in 1979 the policy of one-child but has been a disaster. The policy on 10% reduction on salary for having two children; 5-10% salary bonus for limiting to one child; priority in education, housing, and health care for only children; higher pensions on retirement when limited to one child; and no extra allocation of space for second or third child helped in controlling the population. However the policy distorts the age structure: the population proportion in the younger age groups decreases while the elderly proportion rises. The policy has been implicated in a rise in female infanticide, forced abortions, and underreporting of births of female child, and has been considered as a main cause behind gender imbalance in China. Moreover is much more costly for the state to take care of health care of the elderly compared to the children. In 2015 China eliminated one-child policy and changed the law to permit couples to have two children.

On contrary India has seen its growth rate of population to adjust naturally, helped with non-coercive policies on family planning, and therefore avoided the demographic distortions. The policies promote the marriageable age delay to at least 18. India introduced and emphasised on two children policy with the maternity leave availability for only the first two children in a family; educating the population to believe that a typical small family is better; and retirement benefits for smaller families. India targets to reduce the total fertility rates to 2.0 and have a stable population by end of 2050

In comparison between the both countries China’s was more effective due to mainly their use of punishments and forced sterilizations if a couple had more than one child.