LINDA WERTHEIMER, host:
China is introducing a new program of financial incentives to encourage people in rural areas to stick to the official policy of having only one child per family.
Although the policy is no longer rigorously enforced, especially in rural areas, it has had a dramatic effect in limiting China's population. That's bringing both benefits and problems to Chinese society, as Jill McGivering reports.
Ms. JILL MCGIVERING (Reporter, BBC): It's a difficult calculation, but China's own estimate is that the current generation of under-30s is as many as 400 million people fewer than it would have been as a result of the one child policy.
The aim was to make China's vast population grow in a more manageable way as the country set off on a road of economic reform and growth. In many ways, it's worked. The reduced numbers have helped China to lift millions of people out of poverty. Families who've benefited from the growth have been able to concentrate their resources on just one child.
It's a shift the Chinese authorities eagerly welcome, and which could prove essential as China manages one of the main problems of its policy: its rapidly aging population.
At some point in about ten years, some say sooner, the size of China's workforce will start to shrink. And although there will be fewer people working, they'll be supporting a growing proportion of elderly Chinese. Coping with that isn't going to be easy.
China is already trying to make changes, to complement low-skilled work like manufacturing with more high-tech ventures. In the future, the development of those more sophisticated industries may suit its smaller, better educated workforce much better and prove more lucrative as they struggle to cope with the burden of their aging parents.
WERTHEIMER: That's the BBC's Jill McGivering. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
