One child

Under the label "Demography" or "China" to the right, you'll find some background on China's birth rate and their one-child-policy. Though that policy has changed, the mind set of hundreds of millions of people can't change overnight. Birth rate is staying low.

Maybe government officials got caught up in that era's fear of over-population. Maybe they didn't think things through before passing the laws. But the social cost of decades of restricting families is becoming clear, as explained in new book, One Child.

Fewer young people will be in the work force to support a much bigger generation of old people. There's going to be pressure. See the moving chart here for a graphic visual of the changing ratio between young and old up to the year 2050.

The word "policy" sounds mild, but it included at times dragging a woman pregnant with her second child into custody to get a forced abortion. Counties were not held accountable for methods of enforcement.