"JUST the one for me, thanks." China has eased its one-child-per-couple rule, but the move may not lead to a baby boom. Leading demographers also say it won't immediately redress the gender imbalance – there are around 22 million more men under 20 than women. The imbalance arose because of a traditional preference for boys, which led many couples to have females aborted.
Previously, only couples where both partners had no siblings were allowed to have two children. The Chinese government last week extended this rule to include couples in which just one is a single child.
"A lot of researchers have asked Chinese people whether new rules would make any difference, and the overwhelming answer is 'no'," says Stuart Basten of the University of Oxford. "They say they can't afford it; that they would prefer to invest resources into one child." A 2009 study also showed that three-quarters of married women in Jiangsu in China preferred to have one child rather than two (Asian Population Studies, doi.org/c72kcm).
The gender imbalance will eventually even out, says Wolfgang Lutz, director of the Vienna Institute of Demography, Austria. "The boy preference comes from old agricultural times. In modern cities, people understand that a girl is more likely to look after them in old age. This may lead soon to a more normal sex ratio at birth."
This article appeared in print under the headline "Chinese happy having one child"
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