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      Governments have been trying to influence fertility and population growth rates since before Thomas Malthus started publishing his ‘Essay on the Principle of Population’ in 1798. Malthus worried that population growth would outpace the earth’s ability to produce resources for human survival and recommended that governments find ways to repress it. His followers circulated illegal manuals on birth control in the early 19th century.

      Population control campaigners got a boost in the early 20th century due to the rise of eugenics movements, which were widely popular before becoming tarnished by their association with Nazi Germany. Birth control activists and eugenicists formed an uncomfortable alliance in their quest to influence fertility rates. American feminist Margaret Sanger, for example, teamed up with eugenics organisations such as the American Eugenics Society in her quest to promote birth control, even though she disagreed with many of their positions.

      The 1968 best-selling book, The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich, argued that the world could not feed itself. It revived the population control movement. Population-bomb hysteria took root in much of the world between the 1970s and 1980s. Again, the obsession made strange bedfellows of the political left and the right. The left worried that the world would be doomed because of overpopulation in general. The right in South Africa and prejudiced elites in other countries worried about the overpopulation of black people, or poor people, or other ‘undesirable groups’, in particular.

      In many countries, ruling elites imposed coercive population control policies designed to cut birth rates, especially among the poor. India forcibly sterilised millions during the Indian emergency of 1975–77, often under threat of violence or destruction to their homes. In 1978 China established its one-child policy, which continues to inflict draconian punishments on families with more than one child to this day.

      Often the policies were (and, in cases such as China, still are) enforced with little regard for differences in individual preferences. An Indian official is reported to have said population control was a necessity for the masses, adding that ‘it is not what they want, but what is good for them’. An official in French Indochina said the problem with the natives was that ‘they are born too much and they don’t die enough’.[1]

      The perils of China’s one-child policy

      Through its one-child policy, China decided to restrict married, urban couples to having only one child. The policy is officially enforced through fines and other disincentives. The fines – referred to as ‘social-maintenance fees’ – can be several times a city’s annual income. Second children are also often denied a household registration, a hukou, which entitles a person to basic rights such as education. When parents can’t afford to pay the fine, the government often resorts to grave measures, such as destroying people’s homes or forcing women to undergo abortions and sterilisation.

      One particularly violent and horrific case made international headlines early in 2012 after a leaked photograph went viral. The graphic image showed a 27-year-old woman, Feng Jianmei, lying exhausted next to her dead seven-month-old foetus after Chinese officials kidnapped, drugged and forced her to have an abortion. The photo sparked widespread outrage and protests. Several Chinese organisations are now lobbying the government to replace the one-child policy with a two-child policy.

      Many people have had their houses torn down and their belongings ransacked for breaching the policy. Others have had their children confiscated and sent to orphanages. Government bureaucrats have learned that foreigners will pay thousands to adopt Chinese babies, and they’re happy to cash in on the process.

      Despite all the attention China has received for the grave human rights violations associated with the policy, Chinese officials are adamant that China still has too many people, and that the policy continues to be necessary. They credit it with averting some 400 million births. But that is a wild exaggeration. As in most of the rest of the world, fertility was declining before the programme was introduced, and it would have continued to decline in response to economic growth and the increased availability of contraception.

      China’s policy has also had many tragic unintended consequences. A typical Chinese family today consists of four grandparents,

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