Analysis of China’s one-child policy sparks uproar

Chinese officials have long claimed that the one-child policy—in place from 1980 to 2016—averted some 400 million births, which they say aided global environmental efforts. Scholars, in turn, have contested that number as flawed. 

But in a paper published in the journal Demography in August, Daniel Goodkind—an analyst at the U.S. Census Bureau in Suitland, Maryland, who published as an independent researcher—argues that the figure may, in fact, have merit.

CEPAR Associate Investigator Zhongwei Zhao commented that the paper does not adequately parse the effects of China’s dramatic socioeconomic changes in the past 40 years.