Reply #14: They do provide old age homes in China [View All]

but most Chinese people would rather die than admit they put their parents in one. There's also a very strong cultural bias towards families taking care of their aging parents themselves which predates communism by thousands of years. (Of course, the way it usually works is grandma raises the grandkids and the parents both work insane hours to provide shelter, food and medicine for the whole family.) There's also a sense that only the very poor can't afford to take care of their aging parents so you would lose a lot of face in front of your neighbors if you admitted you put your parents in a rest home.

Most girls work in modern China and are capable of taking care of their parents even when they remain single. The bias towards boys is a tradition in rural China which doesn't have much relevance in modern terms since a well-educated child of either sex could take care of their parents. It's lingering misogyny rather than a problem that the government needs to address.

The more vital problem, I think, is families that lose their only child through illness or natural disaster. In the cities, the relatively wealthy are allowed to use birth control on the honor system after their first child (and if they pay a fine equivalent to a few months wages they can have a second child). In the countryside, women are forcibly sterilized after their first child so even if he/she dies in an earthquake, that couple can never have a second child. I think that creates a lot more desperation and inequality than simply preference for boys over girls.

I don't absolutely have a problem with population control but I think a huge number of problems would be avoided by letting people have two children, keeping the system whereby wealthy couples who want to have more children can pay a fine (and maybe have to contribute more in taxes) and keeping a consistent, humane policy for people who have already had their two children.