With reference to a named country, evaluate attempts to manage population change (15)

During 1959 China experienced a catastrophic famine due to relaxed population control and the promotion of large families, due to this famine 20 million people died. As a result China’s Communist government under the power of Chairman Mao introduced a number of management policies, including the ‘later, longer, fewer’ program and the more extreme ‘one child policy’.

In the early 1970’s a policy known as the ‘later, longer, fewer’ program was introduced. It was the first real attempt to control population growth in China. The authorized age of marriage was raised to 25 for men and 23 for women, whilst couples were encouraged to wait later to begin their families, allow for longer spacing in between children and have fewer children overall.

Contraceptive advice became freely available in an attempt to elongate the time before the first child was born. The policy was partially successful. It began to reduce fertility rates, although not fast enough to really slow down population growth due to the demographic momentum that had already developed.

The One Child Policy was launched in 1979 when the total population reached 1 billion. The initial goal was to stabilise China’s population at 1.2 billion, but due to the slow effects of the ‘later, longer, fewer’ program and the two child family, had to be revised to keep the population under 1.4 billion until 2010.

There were a number of regulations to the policy, the authorized age of marriage for men was 25, and for women, 23. Whereas students and apprentices were not allowed to marry. Enforcers of the policy – primarily in urban areas would monitor the menstrual cycles of women. Contraceptive use became mandatory and incentives for sterilization after the birth of the first child were offered. All pregnancies had to be