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When China relaxed its one child policy late last year onlookers around the world expected a cultural shift. The Chinese government and investors predicted a baby boom, with government officials making the application process cumbersome lest too many people apply at once.

However, neither baby boom nor cultural shift has yet materialised and China will fall well short of the 1m-2m extra births that Wang Peian, the deputy director of the National Health Family Planning Commission, had predicted. Yang Wenzhuang, of the National Health and Family Planning Commission, said about 271,600 couples had so far applied to have a second child, with permission given to 241,300.

Many point to too much bureaucracy as one cause. The Economist notes that in the eastern city of Jinan married couples must provide seven different documents, including statements from employers certifying their marital status. Some also report propaganda campaigns against having a second child by local government officials in certain regions who were worried about a baby boom. Despite this, central government is still hesitant to extend the 'privilege' of having two children to all citizens and have indicated that this isn't on the cards any time soon.

Another potential cause, which cannot be fixed as easily as changing paper forms, is simply that - as in so many countries - the preference has now moved to smaller families because that is what people are now culturally used to. The cost of raising children is also perceived as high and tough competition for good schools and kindergartens is widespread.

The trend towards women having children later in life also creates factors which makes having further children less attractive for families. Rather than being helped by grandparents to bring up their children as was traditionally the case, many Chinese women find themselves looking after aging parents as well as caring for a baby or toddler. As they are also single children - a legacy of the one child policy of the last 30 years - they have no siblings to help them out either.

Mu Guangzong, a professor of demography at Peking University's Population Institute, says many government experts in the past overestimated the people's motivation and resolve to have children. He argues that " what we need to fear is not a baby boom threat but rather continued restrictions and low birth rates,".

As a result many are still protesting that relaxing the one child policy has done little to stop the general Chinese cultural preference for boys (due to the fact that a girl joins her husband's family and looks after them in old age) which has caused so many other demographical issues over the past few decades. Reggie Littlejohn, founder and president of California-based Women's Rights Without Frontiers comments that:
In the absence of changes made to Chinese cultural views, gendercide will continue unabated...China's government could reduce the numbers of aborted or abandoned girls by providing economic incentives to families giving birth to girls and special compensation to retirement-age couples who have no sons to support them. But they have not taken any effective action at all. There is no need for a one-child policy. It should be abolished entirely.
According to The Economist, China's fertility rate has fallen to an estimated 1.5 children per couple, in line with the European average but below the 2.1 that maintains a constant population and is more normal for a country at China's stage of development. It further argues that:
With China ageing quickly, a higher birth rate is needed to underpin long-term social and economic stability. In the past, the state used harsh methods to stop its citizens having babies. In the future, it will have to find clever ways to encourage people to have them. Other countries, not least neighbouring Japan, have struggled with that.
Let's hope that countries like China do not use 'harsh methods' to make people have children should that become economically advantageous in the near future.

Full Story: Chinese 'baby boom' yet to materialize

Source: MercatorNet.com

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China's baby boom fails to materialize - ucanews.com

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When China relaxed its one child policy late last year onlookers around the world expected a cultural shift. The Chinese government and investors predicted a baby boom, with government officials making the application process cumbersome lest too many people apply at once.

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China made huge headlines late last month when it decided to ease its famous "one-child policy" after more than three decades. The policy, requring most couples to have only one child, stands as one of the most famous social experiments of the past century. But how successful was it?
Top image: Adrian Zwegers/Flickr.
A lot of the discussions of China's one-child policy seem to revolve around the idea that it was a human rights violation that led to sex-specific abortions and other abuses, along with problems like a lopsided gender ratio and an aging population - but that it also had a dramatic impact, massively slowing China's population growth.

But a rising group of demographers and sociologists is disputing that idea. By taking a closer look at population figures before and after the policy took effect, and by doing a more careful statistical analysis, researchers have found that China's population growth rate would have decreased in any case, and the policy was not just cruel, but unnecessary.

Bottom line: China says the policy reduced births by 400 million since 1970 - but some experts say the number may be closer to 100 million.
What was the stated goal of China's one-child policy?
The original goal of the policy was to keep China's population to 1.2 billion in the year 2000, according to Cai Yong, a sociology professor at University of North Carolina, and a fellow at the Carolina Population Center. In fact, China's population reached a level of 1.26 billion in 2000, meaning they were over the mark by 60 million people.

But the underlying motivation for that goal of 1.2 billion people was to increase GDP per capita - and China's GDP grew much more quickly than the pessimistic predictions in 1980 had expected. So the GDP per capita was way above target, even though the population also grew more quickly than intended.
What would China's population growth have been without the policy?
This is the biggest question, when it comes to judging the effectiveness of the one-child policy. We can't know what would would have happened if things had been different, because you can't prove a counterfactual.

But Cai has studied the fertility rates of 16 comparable countries, all of which saw rapid declines since 1980 without any one-child policy in place. In a 2012 paper, co-authored with Wang Feng and Gu Baocheng, Cai found that China's projections of future birth rates at the time were unrealistic, when you compare them with the experiences of other countries. Here's the table that shows his results:

Talking to io9, Cai notes that Chinese Americans typically have a fertility rate of 1.5 children per women, similar to China in 2010. Japan's fertility rate has been way below that, around 1.3 children per woman, for the past 30 years. "There's no one-child policy in Taiwan, and Taiwan's fertility rate is barely above one [child per woman]," Cai tells io9. "It dropped below one in 2010."

Taiwan may be 15-20 years ahead of China in terms of economic development, but its fertility rate has been low for years, Cai adds.

Cai and his colleagues also did a Bayesian analysis of China's birth rate from 1970 to 1980 and tried to project what the trend would have been from 1980 onwards, if nothing else had changed. And they found a decline similar to the one observed in other countries.

So it seems likely that China could have reached a level of 1.5 children per women by 2010 regardless - but the decline might have been less steep.
China's population growth rate was already declining sharply
The ultra-pessimistic projections for China's population growth after 1980 are based on a strict linear progression, following China's growth rate prior to 1970.

But in fact, China's fertility rate had already fallen from 5.8 births per woman in 1970 to 2.8 births per woman in 1980, meaning it more or less halved before the one-child policy took effect.

So claiming that the one-child policy caused fertility declines that actually happened in the 1970s is "like Obama taking credit for economic growth during the Clinton years," says Mara Hvistendahl, a contributing editor for Science and author of Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men.

In the 1970s, the Chinese government was experimenting with less authoritarian approaches to population control, including the "Later Longer Fewer" policy, which encouraged women to wait longer to have children and have fewer of them. "Compared to the brutal one-child policy, it's more benign," says Cai.

Many women welcomed the ability to wait longer to have children, given the terrible economic situation of the early 1970s, and the government made it easier to access birth control. The government also had study sessions and meetings to push the idea of having fewer children.

But the government was already trying coercive policies in the 1970s, Hvistendahl tells io9:

Less stringent birth limits were introduced in the early 1970s. And there are signs that forced abortions, etc. were occurring at that time. Teams of medics and midwives moved through the Chinese countryside carrying out "shock attacks" during which they performed IUD insertions, sterilizations, and abortions on women and sterilized men. Some of this made it into the Western press as early as 1973.

What you believe China's population would be today depends on your assumptions about whether the birth rate in China would have continued to fall with or without the policy, says Therese Hesketh, a professor with the Institute for Global Health at University College London.

For her part, Hesketh believes the estimate of 100 million births prevented by the one-child policy is probably on the low end, and the real answer is somewhere between 100 million and 400 million.
What was the compliance rate with the one-child policy?
The policy was implemented differently in different regions, and there were a ton of loopholes, depending on where you lived. In some places, you could have more than one child if you were a fisherman. In others, you could have more than one child if your first child was a girl, says Hvistendahl.

Around the 25th anniversary of the policy, demographer Wang Feng set out to figure out how many couples were actually restricted to one child, adds Hvistendahl. The answer was pretty high: 63 percent. "For most Chinese couples, the one-child policy is a very real thing."
The 1960s and 1970s saw a huge population panic
The United Nations held a huge conference on population control in 1974, at which the Chinese denounced Western calls for population control as part of an imperialist agenda, and the Indian delegate argued that "development is the best contraceptive."

And yet, both China and India were deeply concerned about controlling their population growth in the mid-1970s. China tried several other programs before the one-child policy.

And India sterilized 8.3 million people (mostly men) in "sterilization camps" between 1975 and 1976 - a program which was so unpopular, it helped bring down the government of Indira Gandhi. The United States also has a long history of forced sterilizations.
The number of births is not the same as the rate of population growth.
This is an important point that often gets lost in the discussion of how many births were prevented by the one-child policy, says Cai. It's not just how many babies are born, but when women become mothers, and how much their babies are spaced apart.

"If every woman has a child at age 20, that means in 100 years there will be five generations," says Cai. "But if we delay that to age 25, in 100 years there will be just four generations. That will have a significant effect on the country's population."

So it's "a little simplistic to say the number of births is equal to the number of people," Cai adds.
Do Chinese people actually want more than one child?
That's sort of the biggest question - the birth rates fell in those other countries not because of government coercion, but because a lot of families were happy with just one child.

Cai did another research paper in which he surveyed 30,000 women in Jiangsu Province, a third of whom who were eligible to have a second child. But only a third of those eligible women said they would consider having a second child. And when Cai returned to the province, he found that only 4 percent of eligible women had had a second child, a low figure that shocked him.

Cai believes that many people in China now want only one child so that they can give their kids access to the best education and economic opportunities. Ten years ago, one in 20 college-age people in China attended college, and now it's up to about one in three.

Adds Hvistendahl, "Perhaps the largest success of the policy, if you can call it that, is that it really turned China into a one-child [country]. Many people just don't want more than one child now."

But Hesketh says it's an "extreme view" to say that most people in China don't actually want a second child at this point. "I know many people in China with one child who would have liked to have had two," she says. Hesketh herself has two children, and when she's taken them both to China, people would come up to her on the street and say, "You're so lucky to have two." It's "almost universal" to hear people say that.

Hesketh also frequently hears Chinese people say that their child is lonely because he or she is an only child.
What will the long term effects of this policy be?
It's much easier to reduce the fertility rate than to increase it, Cai stresses in his paper with Wang and Gu. So the growth rate of China's population will probably continue to go down - and Cai expects to see the population actually shrink.

"If you count the so-called ripple effect and echo effect, it could be endless," Cai tells io9. Within 200 or 300 years, the population of China could "diminish very dramatically," with the population being cut in half if current trends continue. Usually, population experts consider 2.1 births per woman the minimum amount needed to maintain a stable population size, so China's rate of 1.5 per woman is one-third below "replacement level." This means every generation is smaller than the last, and the number goes down exponentially.

Thus, even if the one-child policy has had a less dramatic effect than the Chinese government likes to claim, it could have a huge effect in the next century.

A general population decline, around the world, might not be a bad thing, since "we have enough people to go around," says Cai - but if the trend continues too long, "that's a different story."

Then there's the rapidly aging population. Some sources say a quarter of China's population will be over 65 by 2050, but Cai believes it could be as high as 30 percent.

Hesketh also sees China suffering economically as its labor force shrinks due to the lingering effects of the policy. "They couldn't have predicted they would need a huge labor [supply] of young men" to work in factories, she notes. "China could lose its competitive edge because of the lack of young people."

And of course, there's the oft-noted problem of the massive population of young men who won't be able to find wives due to the gender imbalance created by widespread abortions of female fetuses.
Bottom line: How will history judge the one-child policy?
"The one-child policy shows that you can't push population control methods on people without expecting some sort of horrible side effects," Hvistendahl tells io9. "I would call them unintended consequences except that people knew as early as the 1960s that coercive population policies would mean fewer girls born. People in China knew it as well - I found a writeup of a 1970s experiment that suggested doctors in China were looking into sex selection as a population control method."

The paper by Cai, Gu and Wang is pretty blunt in putting the one-child policy in the same category as the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward, two other terrible hardships imposed by the state:

History will remember China's one-child policy as the most extreme example of state intervention in human reproduction in the modern era. History will also likely view this policy as a very costly blunder, born of the legacy of a political system that planned population numbers in the same way that it planned the production of goods. it showcases the impact of a policymaking process that, in the absence of public deliberations, transparency, debate, and accountability, can do permanent harm to the members of a society.

All images by Associated Press, except top image.

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Did China's one-child policy actually reduce population growth?

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China made huge headlines late last month when it decided to ease its famous "one-child policy" after more than three decades. The policy, requring most couples to have only one child, stands as one of the most famous social experiments of the past century. But how successful was it?

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china's family planning policy easing to promote balanced population growth

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China's family planning policy easing to promote balanced population growth - CCTV News - CCTV.com English

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China is now working towards balanced population growth by introducing a revised family planning policy.

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The aging population in China needs a housing solution. So what's stopping the industry from booming?
Since the beginning of 2014, Jim Biggs has been living in a brand-new residential facility for senior citizens with dementia. He's just 54 years old, and has no problem with his memory. Biggs, the managing director of Honghui Senior Housing Management, is one of China's senior living industry pioneers. An expert in elderly care services with 27 years of experience in the US, he is devoting every minute to making 'Friendship House' in Tianjin a success.

As yet, there are 20 empty rooms in the 26-bed facility, which opened in 2013. But he remains optimistic. Few markets can promise such high customer demand as senior care in China. By 2050, there will be more over-60s in China than there are people in the United States. And it's these numbers that keep smiles on the faces of those battling to establish residential care facilities in the face of inconsistent regulation, cultural resistance and onerous bureaucracy.

Yet, the elderly care market in China is still in its infancy, despite the imminent demands of the aging population, and it's still not clear what kinds of business models are best suited to help it grow up.

What Happens to Grandma?

At present, almost all nursing homes in China are publicly funded. According to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, nursing homes across the country have a total of 4.16 million beds. But it's not enough, says Biggs. "If you take a look at the demographics, even if they were to start building today the government wouldn't be able to build enough beds for what they're demographically anticipating they're going to need. And they know this," he says.

In 2013, Wang Hui, director of the Department of Social Welfare and Charity Promotion under the Ministry of Civil Affairs, said China needs about 10 million more nursing home beds.

In Beijing and Shanghai, all public nursing homes are filled to capacity, with long waiting lists. While nurses are also in short supply: there are only 200,000 in the country, with just one tenth holding nursing licenses.

Benjamin Shobert founder and MD of Rubicon Strategy Group-a consulting firm specializing in healthcare, life science and senior care industries-works with governments and private companies to advise them on how to best access the world's fastest growing healthcare market. "It's the dirty secret of the industry, but right now most operators are saying to themselves that we're probably 10-15 years away from having a viable customer base," says Shobert.

According to Joseph Christian, fellow at Harvard Kennedy School, where he is researching the senior housing industry in China, there are simply not the pension benefits or other funding sources available to senior citizens to allow them to pay what companies want to charge.

"Health insurance is only just beginning to come into the marketplace, and I think the country has to have that before the market can really grow," says Christian. "In Japan, the government introduced long-term care insurance in 2000 and that's when the senior living market really began to take off."

Japan has a similarly challenging aging care crisis on its hands, with one in three people predicted to be over 65 by 2030. In response, officials developed a part-insurance funded, part tax-funded care model- to perform alongside the existing health system-that could fund wide-ranging care for retirees.

Fourteen years later, the country now has a competitive market of provision that entitles seniors to everything from home help to residential care. In contrast, China's national health insurance is by and large only applicable within public hospitals where resources are already strapped. Services that extend beyond the walls of the hospital are outside the scope of the insurance, also known as yibao.

Mrs. Lee, who preferred not to give her full name, arranged for her mother to live in Friendship House when it opened last year. Even though she is well versed in dementia care, she said she still had doubts. Despite Friendship House costing a fraction of the equivalent compared to other developed countries, she says that rent costing RMB 800-1,000 per month is still seen as too costly by many. Financial considerations are seen as the primary factor, says Lee.

"I believe I made the right decision. But before my mother moved in, I had some concerns regarding the level of care. I was concerned about her lack of ability to communicate with the caregivers, and whether this would lead to bad situations."

Furthermore, Shobert observes that families are not yet feeling the full economic weight of having elderly relatives: "When the middle-class and upper middle-class sit down as a family and talk about who is going to stop their career to take care of mum and dad, then you'll see the industry take off. But we're not there yet."

Experiments in Senior Care

Senior living projects coming out of the private sector fall into three main categories: real estate targeted at senior citizens, high-end or needs-focused residential care homes, and lifestyle-orientated assisted living complexes.

"What we really have today are a few examples of what should be seen as pilot projects," says Shobert. "A bunch of people trying to figure out what is actually going to work, and it's still pretty early on to be able to say definitively what we're going to get out of that."

The real estate senior housing model focuses heavily on providing property to an older demographic. However, insiders say, these (often Chinese-driven ventures) rarely have an accompanying emphasis on supplying healthcare services.

High acuity assisted living projects that focus on niche areas of the market such as dementia care-where the service need is clearly established-tend to be run by a wholly foreign-owned enterprise and joint ventures. At places such as China Senior Care in Hangzhou and Friendship House, the price will also reflect the expertise of caregivers.

Continuing care retirement communities (CCRC), such as Cherish Yearn and Starcastle (both on the outskirts of

Shanghai), focus on residents enjoying an enhanced lifestyle-restaurant style dining, in-unit housekeeping, shuttle service, planned activities-with healthcare assistance.

"I tell companies to focus on higher acuity models that are going to speak to needs that cannot be addressed with live-in help, like rehabilitation and dementia," says Shobert. "I think you're going to continue to struggle in the middle of the market, where you're not clearly differentiating yourself on the basis of a healthcare need." Mark Spitalnik, CEO of China Senior Care, runs a wholly foreign-owned enterprise in the senior care sector, and deliberately chose to create a needs-based product. His first high-end facility scheduled to open in Hangzhou later in 2014 will likely charge residents approximately RMB 40,000 per month.

Spitalnik points to examples of recent joint ventures between foreign companies and Chinese companies that have deteriorated because the Chinese side wanted a quick and profitable real estate flip while the foreign side insisted on the timelier pursuit of developing all the aspects of a fully equipped senior care facility. He notes Belmont Village and Life Care Services as two such examples.

"Most of the projects in China are driven by real estate. The developers are looking to do projects where they can develop and sell independent living properties, they're not primarily driven by providing care to seniors," says Spitalnik.

Biggs has also encountered Sino-foreign visions in discord. "It's rarely a meeting of minds in the business sense," he says. "In China they won't just come out and say, 'We just need you for the land. We're not really into the senior housing, we just want to buy land at a discount because it's for elderly care so we can build on it'."

When it comes to regulation, the senior care industry fights against complaints common to Chinese legislation: a lack of transparency, consistency and constrictive licensing arrangements.

Experts say that in general the government is 'pro business' but modification of existing legislation can take time as it's caught up in the middle of wider healthcare reform. Plus, there's the perennial problem of a lack of coordination between provincial and central government.

According to Christian, the landscape remains almost impossible to negotiate without setting up a potentially unreliable joint venture with a domestic company. Spitalnik's venture is an exception in Hangzhou.

"In the Ministry of Civil Affairs' Measures adopted as of July 1, 2013, the government clarified and relaxed requirements of professional qualifications for staffing," says Christian. "While previously, the requirements mandated certain levels and competency of personnel, the measures stated that a senior living facility needs to employ management, professional and service personnel commensurate with the services to be provided, thus allowing more flexibility in the operation of the facility." You can also establish branches in other cities, he adds. But the Ministry of Civil Affairs will require a separate license for each facility.

"As the Ministry of Civil Affairs' jurisdiction does not extend to the medical functions of the facilities, which require approval of the Ministry of Health, this creates some uncertainty for investors," he adds. "However, it can vary from province to province, municipality to municipality and district to district. And even within one office, it's possible that different people will have different views on things, so you have to make sure you find the right person to advocate senior living projects." In addition, there are major obstacles when it comes to the issues of land.

In 2006 and 2007, the PRC implemented a restrictive policy on foreign investment in real estate to stabilize property prices and reduce renminbi appreciation pressures. "It's safe to say that there's a lot of work that needs to be done to clarify land right issues," says Shobert. "Right now that's probably one of the most problematic areas."

Current regulations also make it difficult to bring medical staff into your facility. "Doctors and nurses need to practice in an appropriately licensed facility, which historically has been considered a 'medical institution'," explains Shobert, meaning assisted living facilities must meet the same regulatory standards as hospitals.

"The central government needs to populate a new body of regulations that addresses a less onerous regulatory standard for senior living than a hospital or "medical institution" would require," says Shobert.

Then there's the issue of finding staff if or when the medical license is obtained. China currently has only 300,000 caregivers and of these caregivers, just 100,000 have "professional qualifications". Biggs says: "We had staffing issues and eventually just went straight to the local caregiver training college and hired the kids right out of school, and trained them up." But recruiting physicians is not so straightforward.

"Young physicians currently employed by government hospitals have no interests in migrating to us," says Michael Li, who runs the operations for senior living developer Cascade China, which has facilities in Shanghai and Beijing.

He adds: "One good thing about China's mandated retirement age [60 male, 55 female] is the sector technically has plenty of experienced, high quality retired physicians ready, willing and able to participate in the senior care services-if their original employers okay the work with an official seal of approval."

Despite the sector's enormous potential, experts say that investors are currently reluctant to place bets on this market.

"What everybody says about senior living in China is that there's no proven business model. But there's a real herd mentality, so when one starts and it seems to be successful then you'll see a lot of people moving into the sector," explains Christian. Last year, Chinese-owned firm Edward Healthcare, established a UK-based research center-The Edward Centre for Health Care Management Research-to work with the University of Manchester in exploring care systems, technologies and products that could be developed and adopted for use in China According to Jackie Oldham, Professor and Honorary Director of the center, the company brings a hotelier component to senior care.

"After all, why does it have to be an elder care facility, why can't it be a holiday resort with specific facilities?" he adds. At this stage, industry regulation is relatively slight so there is room for genuine innovation and tailored products that meet the needs of the Chinese market. According to industry specialist Spitalnik, foreign companies can overlook the pressing cultural needs of Chinese consumers in their haste to impart expertise.

"For example, in China, if accommodation is too far away from the rest of a person's family and friends, it will be very unattractive. Chinese people also like the idea that the family can live in or around the area where their family's seniors are living." Research has also found that affluent Chinese grandparents do not want to spend money on their senior living care. "They want to see money saved and directed towards the needs of the younger generations," says Shobert. "Finally, one thing I always say to clients, is never underestimate the ability and the willingness of the older Chinese to suffer," he adds. "If they live in a place without some amenities, it's not going to strike them as particularly difficult. The senior living industry has to find a way to convince them they deserve more."

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Aging Population in China: Having a Senior Moment

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The aging population in China needs a housing solution. So what's stopping the industry from booming? Since the beginning of 2014, Jim Biggs has been living in a brand-new residential facility for senior citizens with dementia. He's just 54 years old, and has no problem with his memory.

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national health and family planning commission

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29 Chinese provinces relax decades old one-child policy | Latest News & Updates at Daily News & Analysis

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29 Chinese provinces relax decades old one-child policy - China is steadily moving towards easing its once mandatory one-child policy as 29 of the 31 provincial regions in the world's most populous nation have relaxed the decades-old law, allowing couples to have two children if either parent is an only child.

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Some really interesting points here Daniel. Are China's most fertile days behind them?

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Photograph by AFP via Getty Images

Last November, China announced the loosening of its restrictive one-child population policy: Couples would soon be permitted to have two children so long as one parent was an only child. Government planners predicted that roughly half of China's 11 million eligible couples would chose to have a second child within five years, and investors predicted a boom in sales of diapers, baby formula, and educational toys in China.

The policy change has been rolled out in 29 of China's 33 provinces and regions, yet by the end of May only 271,000 applications for permission to have a second child had been submitted. Many came from older mothers concerned not to lose their chance. At an agency in Beijing's Tuanjiehu neighborhood that connects parents with maternity nannies, staff said that the majority of requests pertaining to second children came from women in their late 30s.

Six months into the new policy is still too early to judge the ultimate impact. But experts now express more modest expectations. "Every metric thus far indicates the loosening isn't leading to a baby boom," says Mei Fong, author of a forthcoming book on China's population policies. With rising costs of urban living, Chinese couples are deliberately limiting family size for reasons similar to those depressing fertility in Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Western countries.

"There's also been a lot of complaints about the incredible layers of bureaucracy you have to go through to get this permission [for a second child], which is another barrier," says Fong, although she sees the government moving to smooth the application process.

Fong also thinks more pro-natal policies might help. Chinese law currently requires employers to grant women 98 days of paid maternity leave-a less-generous standard than in Canada and most European countries, but more liberal than in the U.S., which has no mandate for paid maternity leave. (Check out this handy global comparison map from the Atlantic.)

"It's too little, too late," says Cai Yong, a demographer at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, of China's new population measures. "It probably won't have that much impact on fertility itself." That means China's best demographic years are already behind it. In 2010, 8.9 percent of China's population was aged 65 or older; by 2020, the figure will reach a quarter. Two years ago, the absolute number of people in China's working-age population dipped for the first time.

There's only one small bright spot in China's otherwise bleak demographic outlook: The dangerous preference for male babies-enabled by ultrasound technology and sex-selective abortions-appears to have finally peaked and begun to flatten. In 2004, 121.2 boys were born for every 100 girls in China. Last year, however, the ratio was 117.6, and Cai predicts it will reach 110 within a decade. That's still unnatural, but at least the trend is in the right direction.

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Why China's Second-Baby Boom Might Not Happen

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Last November, China announced the loosening of its restrictive one-child population policy: Couples would soon be permitted to have two children so long as one parent was an only child. Government planners predicted that roughly half of China's 11 million eligible couples would chose to have a second child within five years, and investors predicted a boom in sales of diapers, baby formula, and educational toys in China.