ABSTRACT
Assessments of the impact of China’s population policy often cite the statistic that “more than 300 million” births were averted over the latter half of the twentieth century, and this is attributed to the government’s administration of birth planning (Wei and Wang 1996; Ca et al. 1999). Some assessments include evaluations of socioeconomic benefits as extrapolated from the reduced population growth due to government intervention. The central government, for example, put out a white paper on “China’s Population and Development in the 21st Century,” in which it stated,
Since the implementation of planned child births, the cumulative number of prevented births nationwide has been over 300 million. This saves the nation and the society an enormous amount of costs of child rearing, eases the population pressure on the natural resources and environment, and helps accelerate the economic development and raise the people’s level of living.
