Environmental Systems and Societies · Case studies

ECS.15 — China's one-child policy

Environmental Systems and Societies · SL / HL · syllabus-mapped notes

1. Overview

   The world's largest anti-natalist experiment: a state limit on births that reshaped a nation's age and sex structure.

2. Systems and sustainability angle

   Population dynamics, the demographic transition and momentum: why a low fertility rate did not stop the population growing.

3. Management and response

   Falling birth rates set against coercion, a skewed sex ratio and a rapidly ageing population.

4. HL lens angle

   Individual reproductive rights against a collective goal, and the gendered injustice the policy left behind.