Birth Control in China: Local Data and Their Reliability

Abstract

In 1979, at about the same time that the birth control campaign received renewed impetus, China released impressive data on demographic trends. If these and other more recent data are reliable, the decline of the natural increase rate has been both belated and spectacular. Contrary to what has been assumed the birth rate would seem to have reached its peak during the 1960s (43·6 per 1,000 in 1963). After a secondary peak in the late 1960s, it then declined precipitously during the 1970s, declining by almost half (46·7 per cent) over nine years (33·59 per 1,000 in 1970; 17·9 per 1,000 in 1979). The natural increase rate was, for its part, more than halved during the same period (25·95 per 1,000 in 1970; 11·7 per 1,000 in 1979).