Saturday, December 24, 2011
China's One-Child Policy: Cost & Benefit
AP has an interesting interactive feature today -- hear and watch video of two sets of parents "who have joined an increasingly defiant community of parents in China who have risked their jobs, savings and physical safety to have a forbidden second child." And then click over and listen to 3 generations of Chinese women discuss how "the one-child policy [has] harmed women in many ways, but . . . has also opened up opportunities for some." Finally, click over to check out an interactive chart to see how the number of women in China in the general population, in higher education, etc., has changed between 1980 and 2009 (while the percentage of women in the National People's Congress remains basically constant -- not too different from us).
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2 comments:
You know what's weird? I have a co-worker from Beijing. He comes from what must have been an upper class, wealthy family because he is highly educated and before leaving China permanently he was able to travel all over the world working for HP. They eventually moved him to the US and he became a citizen, and he and his wife, also Chinese, have two kids. He has told me that all of his friends back in Beijing have at least 2 kids. Why are these wealthy, well educated families able to have 2 kids without a care in the world? He clearly doesn't think of the 2 child policy as applying to the people that he knows in Beijing. Did they pay fines to have their second children? Or are they simply in a class where it is ok and not even something that they think about?
I believe they paid their fines. Many urban professionals are able to do this. Rural and mirgrant farmers, not so much. The disparity in income is huge.
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