Family Planning and Economic Development in CHINA

THIS COLORFUL POSTER OF a mother holding up her baby daughter against the blue sky projects an ideal image of a strong mother, freed from the exhaustion of caring for many children, including the burden of housework for a large family. With one child, she can concentrate her time and energy on raising the child and playing an active role in the economic development of the country as well. The power lines symbolize the changes in the rural mountainous region brought about by industrial development. The mother and her baby girl—a familiar image—are now as free as the pair of birds flying high in the sky, signifying their limitless future in the transformation of Chinese society.

China’s family planning campaigns in the 1950s to 1980s were intended to promote both the welfare of mothers and children and socioeconomic development. The Chinese population was 22% of the world in 1949 with 542 million people; by 1999, it was 20% of the world’s population with 1.26 billion people.¹ The fast population growth caused serious concerns that it would outpace economic growth. The government encouraged single people to delay marriage, married people to use reliable methods of contraception, and those with many children to consider sterilization. Popular media—such as this health poster—publicized the advantages of family planning: the health of mothers and children, better care for the next generation, the fulfillment of women at work and study, and national health and prosperity. Family planning was a vital part of China’s program of national development, aiming to sustain natural resources and provide better living standards for the people.

National campaigns to educate people to adopt family planning voluntarily intensified in the early 1970s with workshops and public displays of posters in workplaces. The campaigns emphasized later marriage, longer birth spacing, and fewer children. The visual images of posters were designed to communicate the message directly to the public in a self-explanatory manner. With the State Family Planning Commission setting the overarching goals, local governments pursued them consistently and effectively, making contraception and abortion universally accessible and free. They promoted the use of various birth control methods and enforced the program with rewards and penalties. As a result, the general fertility rate declined significantly, from 5.75 children per woman in 1970 to 2.12 in 1985.¹

The practice of family planning benefits mothers’ and children’s health.

Source. The image is from a series of seven posters, created and produced by the Family Planning Office of Kunming, China, circa 1975. Courtesy of the Prints and Photographs Collection, History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD.

The one-child policy program, initiated in 1978, was more effectively carried out in cities than in the countryside. All that would change as China’s market economy caused millions of young farmers to migrate to cities for work since the 1990s. The highly competitive working environment made it difficult for young people to have more children in the challenging urban settings, whereas urbanization made less land available for farming. The changed economic pattern led rural couples to voluntarily have fewer children.² By 2004, the fertility rate had decreased to 1.7 children per woman, with 1.3 in urban areas and almost 2.0 in rural areas.³ China’s population growth clearly has been affected by the market economy in the past 20 years, aside from the government family planning policy.