THREE children in one family is now okay in the People’s Republic of China (PROC).
Forty-two years and two generations ago, the Asian superpower imposed its one-child policy on one-fourth of humanity (I recall selling tickets to Edgar Snow’s documentary on that subject as a young activist in the 1970s in Manila). It boggled the mind then that one country, government and party ruled so much of humanity.
China and Edgar Snow were delivering the message that with so many people under one regime, something must be going right.
In 1979 the PROC made a targeted fertility rate its official population policy, a one-child policy for every woman. Post-Mao China apparently was no longer a proud leader of one-fourth of humanity; it would be content with a smaller share of the world population in exchange for economic growth.
Two generations later, China is choosing greater social cohesion and solidarity, counting on its economic power to pay for a more stable population-age structure.
China’s example of a “roller coaster” population policy is a lesson for governments, which have short-term economic goals, with matching short-term population policies.
Plans, programs, policies
Numbers count in the way countries plan for their future; usually, medium-term plans that last five to six years. Those plans begin with demographics: population census, population growth rates, fertility rates and eventually total fertility rate (the latter is actually interpreted unofficially as a preferred fertility rate, not a target). The Philippines has aligned itself with most countries that prefer a fertility rate of two children, and the demographic dividend that follows once a population has stabilized at that fertility rate.
Soon after China announced its new three-child policy, a quick survey showed support from a thousand respondents, but an overwhelming 22,000 did not agree with it. The Chinese population had lost its appetite for large families.
But it would be wrong to blame it all on a shortsighted population policy. All over the world, people are choosing smaller families and lower fertility. While much of the world in the 20th Century—the second half of it—were worried with limits to growth, by 1994 the UN was advising countries to respect sexual and reproductive health and rights in population programs and all countries removed population and fertility targets (except China, which only lifted its one-child policy in 2015).
In the 21st century countries are more concerned with age structure than about fertility. A burgeoning older population and smaller base of young people has turned economic calculations on its head: a larger older population means higher social costs which cannot be maintained by decreasing numbers of a country’s working population.
PHL’s ‘demographic window’ closing
The Philippines is a latecomer to these population concerns, even in our Asean region, due to our relatively higher fertility rates. The country has only recently addressed its high fertility with the implementation of the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Law, since it was only in November 2017 when all legal challenges to the ruling were lifted.
Even as the country is only now seriously addressing high fertility, the numbers of older Filipinos are continuing to increase. The Philippines is expected to become an aging society by 2035, when 14 percent of Filipinos will be 60 years and older.
With the window of opportunity of a demographic dividend opening in a matter of four years when the country achieves a stable population with a fertility rate of 2.1, we will have only a decade of a demographic dividend before it closes with the advent of an aging Philippines in 2035—less than 15 years from now.
Now is the best time to review our population policy, which is as old as the Commission on Population and Development created in 1969. The country is at a crossroads in terms of its demographic transition, which we will only pass once in this decade of the 2020s.
We have the latecomers’ opportunity to learn from the experience of China to craft our own population policy based on our long-term ambition (think Ambisyon 2040), not just the medium-term plans of the next administration.
Undersecretary Juan Antonio “Doc Jeepy” Perez III is the executive director of the Commission on Population and Development, or POPCOM. For comments and reactions, e-mail juan.perez@popcom.gov.ph.