Newswise — A sociologist studying family relationships and aging in China said that despite the recently announced changes in the country’s “one-child policy” — allowing women in urban China to now have two children without any preconditions — the one-child policy itself, along with urbanization, have most likely brought about lasting changes in cultural expectations regarding family size.
“While Chinese grandparents are celebrating the new two-child policy, many, if not most, young modern couples may face real life challenges that deter their decision to produce a second child,” said Heying Jenny Zhan, associate professor of sociology at Georgia State University in Atlanta.
Zhan said that urbanization in the country, which increased population in Chinese cities from 10 percent in the 1970s to over 50 percent in the 2010s, plus the increased educational levels of women are top two factors that have helped lead to this change.
“Along with their higher rate of participation in the public labor force that went along with the one-child policy during the last three decades, these factors have effectively brought about cultural and ideological changes in Chinese society,” she explained. "Among them is the declining expectation for large families for the sake of old age."
“The changes may have been internal, maybe another unintended consequence of the human engineering centered around economic growth,” she continued.
Another unintended consequence of the one-child policy is part of Zhan's research: the long-term effects of the policy on elder care in the nation -- something that was traditionally accomplished, in a less urban nation than today, by adult children in larger families.
A very large baby-boom from 1950 to 1980 in China, followed by a dramatic baby-bust of the one-child generation, is causing a dramatic demand in long-term care for the Chinese baby boom generation.
It's something that the U.S. will face as well with its own demographically-defined baby boom (children born after the end of World War II until the early 1960s), but on a comparatively far smaller scale, by total population, than China.
"By 2050, the projected elderly population will be, or is expected to be 30.5 percent of the total population, or around 400 million, based on the Xinhua News Agency, the official state media of China," Zhan explained. "In other words, China's elderly population is going to exceed the total U.S. population projected for 2050.
"Imagine the daunting tasks of pension, health care, and long term care for the aging Chinese baby boomers and echo boomers (children of the boomers) are to be shouldered by the one-child generation and their children," she continued, "or the small cohort of the second-child sibling—how likely is China’s economic growth to continue without a new working population coming into the pool of work force!"
Zhan has conducted research in the field of family policies and aging for over two decades. Starting in the late 1990s, she conducted her dissertation research on the topic of "The impact of the one Child policies on Elder Care in China" drawing samples of the first cohort of the one-child generation born in 1979-1980, at their time of entering college in 1997-98.
Her research findings, based on data collected in 1998-99, revealed that children from the one-child families were less likely to express willingness to provide parental care if there was work and care conflict even though they were just as likely to express the obligations of care compared to their peers from the multiple child families.
Her recent research continued on the issue of long term care, particularly institutional care in China, when adult children are unavailable for direct care for elderly parents due to work, geographic distance, or other family responsibilities.
She received a Fulbright Senior research grant in 2008 to conduct research in Nanjing to study recent developments of institutional care in China, and her research on the same topic was funded by the National Institute of Aging in 2009 to 2011.
Her research shows that population aging is creating increasing demands for long term care in China. Adult children are becoming increasingly unavailable for parental care. Community based care as well as institutional care will have to develop rapidly to meet the growing demands of elder care as Chinese baby-boomers are soon to need care, and their one-child generation children are unlikely to provide direct hands-on care at home.
For more about Zhan, her research and teaching, and her collaborations, visit http://sociology.gsu.edu/profile/jenny-zhan/.
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