Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

If Science Had Come First: A Billion Person Fable for the Ages (A Reply to Comments)

  • Published:
Demography

The Original Article was published on 05 April 2018

The Original Article was published on 05 April 2018

The Original Article was published on 05 April 2018

The Original Article was published on 05 April 2018

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5

Notes

  1. I’ll offer just one example. A traditional Chinese wedding ceremony typically ended with a family trip to the newlywed’s bedroom, where children were encouraged to jump up and down on the bed. The hope was that their little feet would encourage the bed, as it were, to bring forth more children. My Taiwanese partner at the time—the tenth of 10 children—was upset during his childhood that he was not allowed to stomp on the nuptial bed like other children, or even to enter the bedroom. Why? He was born in the Year of the Tiger, and his family feared that his mere presence might devour the procreative powers otherwise being imparted to the bed.

  2. Here and elsewhere, researchers seem to have located examples of very rapid fertility decline and then tried to justify, ex post facto, why those are appropriate comparators for China. For example, Amartya Sen has repeatedly proposed fertility decline in the Indian State of Kerala as a comparator (1994, 1999; also mentioned in Zhao and Zhang’s comment). Kerala is a highly flawed comparator, not simply because it is a subnational entity, but also because it is a double outlier. In the 1990s, according to Sen, Kerala had higher levels of literacy than other states of India as well as all provinces of China.

  3. The striking similarity of income growth between Thailand and the 16-country comparator (Wang et al. 2013) convinced me that the latter would be an appropriate comparator for China. Despite that similarity, Thailand’s fertility was notably lower. This is a good illustration of the lack of a “deterministic” relationship between fertility and income.

  4. I am not the only observer to remark on Greenhalgh’s habit of “demolishing straw men” (Aird 1990:96) and launching expositional seesaws. Mirsky (2011), in the first sentence of his review of “Cultivating Global Citizens: Population in the Rise of China” (Greenhalgh 2010), notes that the author “starts out by attacking the West’s ‘master narrative’ about the one-child policy: A cruel communist state suppresses the reproductive desires of the Chinese people. Then she proceeds to show that this is an accurate reading of the reality.”

  5. Johnson’s vignettes dislodged long-dormant memories from my first field survey in Vietnam in 1993, during which I accompanied interviewers to the homes of some interviewees and often found myself becoming the subject of observation. One interview in a rural northern village in the Red River Delta was with a gentleman several years older than I, who seemed to breathe with some difficulty. He offered tea, as many interviewees would. About halfway into the interview, he suddenly dissolved into tears and wept quietly throughout much of what remained, dutifully answering questions about marital status, his ideal numbers of children, ancestral altars, and the like, yet interjecting periodically “tai sao quan trong” (why is this important?). It became clear without saying that coming face to face with an American took him back somewhere. After we were finished, as I thanked him and prepared to leave from his front doorstep, he did something unexpected. He stood straight up and saluted me. I did the same back, and then had to leave him to his memories.

References

  • Aird, J. S. (1990). Slaughter of the innocents: Coercive birth control in China. Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Banister, J. (1987). China’s changing population. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Basten, S., & Gu, B. (2013). Childbearing preferences, reform of family planning restrictions and the low fertility trap in China (Oxford Centre for Population Research Working Paper No. 61). Oxford, UK: Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford.

    Google Scholar 

  • Basten, S., & Jiang, Q. (2014). China’s family planning policies: Recent reforms and future prospects. Studies in Family Planning, 45, 493–509.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bloom, D. E., Canning, D., & Sevilla, J. (2003). The demographic dividend: A new perspective on the economic consequences of population change (Report). Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Bongaarts, J., & Greenhalgh, S. (1985). An alternative to the one-child policy. Population and Development Review, 11, 585–617.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cai, Y. (2010). China’s below replacement fertility: Government policy or socioeconomic development. Population and Development Review, 36, 419–440.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Caldwell, J. C. (1994). New challenges for demography. Journal of the Australian Population Association, 11, 9–19.

    Google Scholar 

  • Congressional-Executive Commission on China. (2002). Women’s Rights and China’s New Family Planning Law: Hearing before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, One Hundred Seventh Congress, Second Session, September 23 2002. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Publishing Office. Retrieved from https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-107hhrg82487/html/CHRG-107hhrg82487.htm

  • Cowen, T. (2008, May 12). Hail Emily Oster! [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/05/hail-emily-oste.html

  • de Sherbinin, A., Carr, D., Cassels, S., & Jiang, L. (2007). Population and environment. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 32, 345–373.

  • Dragon Year Baby Boom Looming. (1987, June 22). Min Sheng Bao. (in Chinese)

  • Entwisle, B. (1989). Measuring components of family planning program effort. Demography, 26, 53–76.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Feeney, G., Wang, F., Zhou, M., & Xiao, B. (1989). Recent fertility dynamics in China: Results from the 1987 one percent population survey. Population and Development Review, 15, 297–322.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fong, M. (2016). One child: The story of China’s most radical experiment. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

    Google Scholar 

  • Friedman, J., Goodkind, D., Bui, C., & Truong, S. A. (2001). Work and retirement among the elderly in Vietnam. Research on Aging, 23, 209–232.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goodkind, D. (1991). Creating new traditions in modern Chinese populations: Aiming for birth in the Year of the Dragon. Population and Development Review, 17, 663–686.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goodkind, D. (1992a). Creating new traditions in modern Chinese societies: Aiming for birth in the Year of the Dragon (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Department of Sociology and Demography, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA. Retrieved from https://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations/AAI9235143/

  • Goodkind, D. (1992b). Estimates of averted Chinese births, 1971–1990: Comparisons of fertility decline, family planning policy, and development in six Confucian societies (Research School of Social Sciences Working Papers in Demography No. 38). Canberra: Australian National University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goodkind, D. (1993). New zodiacal influences on Chinese family formation: Taiwan, 1976. Demography, 30, 127–142.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goodkind, D. (1994). Abortion in Vietnam: Measurement, puzzles, and concerns. Studies in Family Planning, 25, 342–352.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goodkind, D. (1995a). The significance of demographic triviality: Minority status and zodiacal fertility timing among Chinese Malaysians. Population Studies, 14, 45–55.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goodkind, D. (1995b). Rising gender inequality in Vietnam since reunification. Pacific Affairs, 68, 342–359.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goodkind, D. (1995c). Vietnam’s one-or-two child policy in action. Population and Development Review, 21, 85–113.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goodkind, D. (1996a). Chinese lunar birth timing in Singapore: New concerns for child quality amidst multicultural modernity. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 58, 784–795.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goodkind, D. (1996b). State agendas, local sentiments: Vietnamese wedding practices amidst socialist transformations. Social Forces, 75, 717–742.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goodkind, D. (1997). The Vietnamese double marriage squeeze. International Migration Review, 31, 108–127.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goodkind, D. (2011). Child underreporting, fertility, and sex ratio imbalance in China. Demography, 48, 291–316.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goodkind, D. (2013, September). Zodiacal birth timing cycles in East Asia: An update. Paper presented at the University of Maryland Population Research Center, College Park, MD.

  • Goodkind, D. (2015). The claim that China’s fertility restrictions contributed to the use of prenatal sex selection: A sceptical reappraisal. Population Studies, 69, 263–279.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goodkind, D. (2017a). The astonishing population averted by China’s birth restrictions:. Estimates, nightmares, and reprogrammed ambitions. Demography, 54, 1375–1399.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goodkind, D. (2017b, April). 540 million and growing: How demographers missed the astonishing population averted by China’s birth planning restrictions. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America, Chicago, IL.

  • Goodkind, D. (2017c, April). The big short: Four reasons to bet on a collapse in China’s child sex ratios. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America, Chicago, IL.

  • Goodkind, D. (2017d). Review of “China’s hidden children: Abandonment, adoption, and the human costs of the one-child policy” by Kay Ann Johnson. China Journal, 78, 179–180.

  • Goodkind, D., & Phan, T. (1997). Reasons for rising condom use in Vietnam. International Family Planning Perspectives, 23, 173–178.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Greenhalgh, S. (1986, July 3). Chinese abortions: Point’s been made so now ease off. Wall Street Journal.

  • Greenhalgh, S. (1990). The evolution of the one-child policy in Shaanxi, 1979–88. The China Quarterly, 122, 191–229.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Greenhalgh, S. (2003). Science, modernity, and the making of China’s one-child policy. Population and Development Review, 29, 163–196.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Greenhalgh, S. (2008). Just one child: Science and policy in Deng’s China. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Greenhalgh, S. (2010). Cultivating global citizens: Population in the rise of China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Greenhalgh, S. (2012). On the crafting of population knowledge. Population and Development Review, 38, 121–131.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Greenhalgh, S., & Winckler, E. (2005). Governing China’s population: From Leninist to neoliberal biopolitics. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gu, B., & Wang, F. (Eds.) (2009). An experiment of eight million people: Reports from areas with a two-child policy. Beijing: China Social Sciences Academic Press. (in Chinese).

    Google Scholar 

  • Gu, B., Wang, F., Guo, Z., & Zhang, E. (2007). China’s local and national fertility policies at the end of the twentieth century. Population and Development Review, 33, 129–147.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harmsen, P. (2017, December 8). China. A scientific article about the country’s extreme way to keep population growth down has created a heated debate in academic circles. A demographic case study which straddles science, politics and ethics. Weekendavisen, 8–9. (in Danish)

  • Hvistendahl, M. (2010). Has China outgrown the one-child policy? Science, 329, 1458–1461.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hvistendahl, M. (2017). Analysis of China’s one-child policy sparks uproar. Science, 358, 283–284.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, K. A. (2016). China’s hidden children: Abandonment, adoption, and the human costs of the one-child policy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Kaufman, J., Zhang, E., & Xie, Z. (2006). Quality of care in China: Scaling up a pilot project into a national reform program. Studies in Family Planning, 37, 17–28.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lavely, W., & Freedman, R. (1990). The origins of the Chinese fertility decline. Demography, 27, 357–367.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leo, J. (2012, February 22). A Harvard apologist for China’s one-child policy brutality [Web log post]. Retrieved from https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2012/02/a_harvard_apologist_for_chinas/

  • Levitt, S. (2008, May 22). An academic does the right thing [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://freakonomics.com/2008/05/22/an-academic-does-the-right-thing/

  • Liang, Z. (1979, December). Dui woguo jinhou jishinian renkou fazhan zhanlüe de jidian yijian [Several opinions on China’s population development strategy in the next few decades]. Paper presented at the Population Conference, Chengdu City, China.

  • Liang, Z. (1985, July). Guanyu wanhun wanyu jia jiange shengyu shidian de jidian shuoming [Explanations of the “late marriage, late childbearing plus spacing” birth experiment]. Speech at the Plenary Meeting of Cadres on making arrangements for the implementation of the “late marriage and late childbearing plus spacing” birth experiment in Yicheng County, Shanxi, China.

  • Liang, Z. (2007). On changing and reforming the planned birth system. Book manuscript. (in Chinese)

  • Malthus, T. (1965). An essay on the principle of population. New York, NY: August Kelley. (Original work published 1798)

  • Merli, M. G., & Morgan, S. P. (2011). Below replacement fertility preferences in Shanghai. Population (English version), 66, 519–542.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Merli, M. G., & Smith, H. L. (2002). Has the Chinese family planning policy been successful in changing fertility preferences? Demography, 39, 557–572.

    Google Scholar 

  • Michelson, E. (2010). Family planning enforcement in rural China: Enduring state-society conflict? In J. C. Oi, S. Rozelle, & X. Zhou (Eds.), Growing pains: Tensions and opportunity in China’s transformation (pp. 189–226). Stanford, CA: Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center, distributed by Brookings Institution Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ministry of the Interior (Taiwan). (2014). Statistical yearbook of the Republic of China 2014 (Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, Ed.). Taipei, Taiwan: Executive Yuan, Republic of China.

  • Mirsky, J. (2011, January 2). Book review: China’s dreams of superior children. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704735304576057300258180310

  • Mosher, S. W. (1983). Broken earth: The rural Chinese. London, UK: Free Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nie, Y., & Wyman, R. J. (2005). The one-child policy in Shanghai: Acceptance and internalization. Population and Development Review, 31, 313–336.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Oster, E. (2009). Proximate sources of population sex imbalance in India. Demography, 46, 325–339.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Oster, E. (2012). HIV and sexual behavior change: Why not Africa? Journal of Health Economics, 31, 35–49.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Oster, E., & Chen, G. (2008). Hepatitis B does not explain male-biased sex ratios in China (NBER Working Paper No. 13971). Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Peng, X. (1987). Demographic consequences of the great leap forward in China’s provinces. Population and Development Review, 13, 639–670.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Preston, S. H., Heuveline, P., & Guillot, M. (2000). Demography: Measuring and modelling population processes. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scharping, T. (2003). Birth control in China 1949–2000: Population policy and demographic development. London, UK: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sen, A. (1994, September 22). Population: Delusion and reality. New York Review of Books. Retrieved from http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1994/09/22/population-delusion-and-reality/

  • Sen, A. (1999). Development as freedom. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.

    Google Scholar 

  • Short, S. E., Zhai, F., Xu, S., & Yang, M. (2001). China’s one-child policy and the care of children: An analysis of qualitative and quantitative data. Social Forces, 79, 913–943.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smith, H. L., Tu, P., Merli, M. G., & Hereward, M. (1997). Implementation of a demographic and contraceptive surveillance system in four counties in North China. Population Research and Policy Review, 16, 289–314.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Song, J., & Li, G. (1980). Quantitative research on the problem of population development. Economic Research, 2. (in Chinese)

  • Tien, H. Y. (1991). China’s strategic demographic initiative. New York, NY: Praeger.

    Google Scholar 

  • United Nations Population Division (UNPD). (2017). World population prospects: The 2017 revision. New York, NY: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wang, F. (2013, November 19). Bringing an end to a senseless policy: China’s “one-child” rule should be scrapped. New York Times. Retrieved from www.nytimes.com

  • Wang, F., & Cai, Y. (2010). Siyi zhongguoren shi zenmo shaoshengde? [How could China have 400 million averted births?]. Zhongguo Gaige, 7, 85–88.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wang, F., Cai, Y., & Gu, B. (2013). Population, policy, and politics: How will history judge China’s one-child policy? Population and Development Review, 38(Suppl. 1), 115–129.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wang, F., Gu, B., & Cai, Y. (2016). The end of China’s one-child policy. Studies in Family Planning, 47, 83–86.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wei, Y., & Zhang, L. (2014). Reexamination of the Yicheng two-child policy. China Journal, 72, 98–120.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Whyte, M. K., Wang, F., & Cai, Y. (2015). Challenging myths about China’s one-child policy. China Journal, 74, 144–159.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • World Bank. (2017). World Development Indicators, 2017. Washington, DC: World Bank.

  • Xinhua. (1991). Decision on stepping up family planning work. Translated in Foreign Broadcast Information Services (FBIS: CHI-91-119, pp. 33–36).

  • Xinhua. (2017, April 18). Africa could learn from China in harnessing demographic dividend: UN official. Retrieved from http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-04/18/c_136218491.htm

  • Zhang, G., & Zhao, Z. (2006). Reexamining China’s fertility puzzle: Data collection and data use in the last two decades. Population and Development Review, 32, 293–321.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang, J. (2017). The evolution of China’s one-child policy and its effects on family outcomes. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31(1), 141–160.

  • Zhao, Z. W. (2015). Closing a sociodemographic chapter of Chinese history. Population and Development Review, 41, 681–686.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhao, Z. W., & Chen, W. (2011). China’s far below replacement fertility and its long-term impact: Comments on the preliminary results of the 2010 census. Demographic Research, 25(article 26), 819–836. https://doi.org/10.4054/DemRes.2011.25.26

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Independent Researcher, Arlington, VA, USA

    Daniel Goodkind

Authors
  1. Daniel Goodkind
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Additional information

This reply refers to the comments available at [https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-018-0658-7], [https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-018-0660-0], and [https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-018-0662-y] as well as the note [https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-018-0659-6].

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Goodkind, D. If Science Had Come First: A Billion Person Fable for the Ages (A Reply to Comments). Demography 55, 743–768 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-018-0661-z

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-018-0661-z

Keywords

Search

Navigation