BABY BOOM?

China has ended its decades-old one-child policy. But with birth rates on the decline, the move may have come too late,

China ended its controversial decades-old one-child policy Thursday in a bid to address the country’s stark gender imbalance and aging population. Leaders announced that all married couples would now be allowed to have two children.

The announcement came after the Communist Party’s Central Committee concluded a four-day meeting in a heavily guarded hotel in western Beijing.

The decision was among the few substantial changes announced by the party, which was meeting to approve proposals for China’s next five-year development plan, which starts next year.

Here’s what you need to know about this end of an era for the world’s most populous country.

Why was the policy implemented?

China’s one-child policy came into effect in 1979 as the country sought to control its then-surging population of 969 million. The government also aimed to limit demands on resources like water and food.

The policy has been more strictly enforced in cities: Rural couples were allowed two children if their firstborn was a girl. Ethnic minorities, which make up about 8.5 per cent of the population, were also allowed more than one child.

“This policy is depicted sometimes outside of China in a pretty drastic way, but in fact, up to 53 per cent of the population was not obliged to follow it,” explained André Laliberté, a political studies professor at the University of Ottawa who specializes in Chinese politics.

How was it enforced?

Chinese authorities could fine couples caught violating the policy in proportion to their income. In some cases, rural families saw their livelihood taken away in the form of their pigs and chickens.

Women have been under tremendous societal pressure not to have more than one child. This has led to forced sterilizations, infanticide and sex-selective abortions — even though those practices were banned by the government.

What impact has the policy had?

The Chinese government says the policy prevented 400 million births. But many researchers have reported that China’s birth rate would have fallen naturally anyway as a result of higher education levels, urbanization and other factors.

“If the original goal was to control or limit the growth, you can say that the government has succeeded in achieving that. And the interesting thing is that, in a way, they didn’t even have to put that policy in place because urban residents were themselves thinking that raising 20 children was too expensive, so they wanted smaller families,” Laliberté told the Star.

A preference for male babies under the policy has created a stark gender imbalance, making marriage impossible for millions of men.

The United Nations estimates that in 2013 China was home to 107.6 males for every 100 females .

“That happens in other societies, but this traditional preference has been exacerbated by the one-child policy,” Laliberté said.

Didn’t China already ease the one-child policy?

China decided in 2013 to allow couples to have a second child if either the mother or father is an only child. The change meant that most couples could legally have two children.

But that didn’t have a huge impact on demographics, Laliberté said.

“When the fertility rate of a population diminishes below a certain threshold, it’s really, really difficult to come back. Those analyses in China have shown that even if families were allowed to have two children or more, there’s really a small proportion of the families that wanted to have more children,” he said.

What happens next?

Citigroup researchers say they expect a rise in Chinese births of 5 to 10 per cent. But childbirth is already on the decline in China, so this change may not have a huge effect.

According to U.N. figures, the fertility rate was 1.7 live births per woman in China between 2010 and 2015. The overall population grew at an annual rate of 0.6 per cent in that same period. “In a way it’s too late,” Laliberté said. Still, Chinese authorities hope that more births will replenish its declining labour force, the result of a quickly aging population. Bloomberg reported in January that the country’s working age population — between age 16 and 59 — fell by 3.71 million in 2014, the third straight year of decline.