Formal comment on "Assessing the impact of the 'one-child policy' in China: A synthetic control approach".

For nearly half a century, parents in China have faced compulsory quotas allowing them to have no more than one or two children. A great debate in recent years over the impact of this program on China's population continues in PLOS ONE with the publication of Gietel-Basten et al. (2019).

The demographic impact and development benefits of meeting demand for family planning with modern contraceptive methods.

Background: Meeting demand for family planning can facilitate progress towards all major themes of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): people, planet, prosperity, peace, and partnership. Many policymakers have embraced a benchmark goal that at least 75% of the demand for family planning in all countries be satisfied with modern contraceptive methods by the year 2030.

Objective: This study examines the demographic impact (and development implications) of achieving the 75% benchmark in 13 developing countries that are expected to be the furthest from achieving that benchmark.

The Astonishing Population Averted by China's Birth Restrictions: Estimates, Nightmares, and Reprogrammed Ambitions.

China launched an unprecedented program to control its population in 1971. Experts have dismissed the official estimate of 400 million births averted by this program as greatly exaggerated yet neglect to provide their own estimates. Counterfactual projections based on fertility declines in other countries suggest that China's program-averted population numbered 360-520 million as of 2015.

The claim that China's fertility restrictions contributed to the use of prenatal sex selection: A sceptical reappraisal.

Most observers assume that China's fertility restrictions contribute to the use of prenatal sex selection. I question the logic and evidence underlying that assumption. Experts often stress that China's low fertility is largely voluntary, and that fertility restrictions are an unneeded safety valve.

Child underreporting, fertility, and sex ratio imbalance in China.

Child underreporting is often neglected in studies of fertility and sex ratio imbalance in China. To improve estimates of these measures, I use intercensal comparisons to identify a rise in underreporting, which followed the increased enforcement and penalization under the birth planning system in 1991. A new triangulation of evidence indicates that about 19% of children at ages 0-4 were unreported in the 2000 census, more than double that of the 1990 census.

China's missing children: the 2000 census underreporting surprise.

We compare the age and sex structure of China's 2000 population census to an estimate of that structure derived from a projection from the 1990 census. Based on China's own official estimates of demographic change, our intercensal analysis indicates a shortfall in enumeration of more than a quarter of all children under age 5 and an eighth of those between 5 and 9, a total of nearly 37 million children missing in the 2000 census. We show that the shortfall is primarily due to underreporting of children in the census.