Question

While China sticks to their One-Child Policy, Japan's government tells its people that having babies is "fun" in an effort to fight declining birth rates. Two very different countries, two very different problems...do a little research online, discuss both countries efforts to deal with their respective birth rate issues and their pros and cons.

Do you think either policy could be successfully implemented by U.S government? Why? Explain your answer.

Answer 1

China is a country with largest population in the world. It has caused them to be a location for low cost labor where people compete for the limited number of opportunities. To reduce the competition and burden upon the welfare programs, the country has implemented one child policy. It has the pros as population growth will be under control, human capital development program will be more effective and scarce resources will be efficiently utilized with better living standard, high life expectancy and low mortality rates. Though there are few disadvantages also. As cons of the policy of one child, there will be an aging population in the country and cost of health care will increase over a period of time. Aggregate demand creation will also become stagnant and it will be unable to fuel the economy.
In contrast the China, the country of Japan has aging population with lower birth rates. It has created a problem of lack of younger population as intellectual people in the country. So, the government encourages to have more number of babies in the family. The pros of the policy is to get population growth, more number of young people as intellectual pool and increase in consumption leading to the demand. The cons is that it will put pressure upon the government to pay or plan policies for the human capital development and make infrastructure that will support these new population. The building of production capabilities will be another requirement for a country like Japan with the limited number of natural resources.
The USA is a country that has huge diversity in its population in terms of race, color and ethnicity. Each community on the basis of cultural & religious background has different birth rates. Further, the USA is a destination for huge number of migrants in the country. In this regard, any of these two policies in absolute form, will create more harm than the good. So, there should be policy to increase the birth rate, with an ability to feed. Or birth rate should be linked with the income earning capacity of the people so that the burden of development of new babies, should not shift back to the US government. Besides, the USA already gets a significant number of talented workforce as migrants in the form of engineers, doctors and other skill based professionals. So, a carefully planned policy is required and above two policies prevalent in Japan and china, will met with limited success and more harm.