Nature study links stricter official incentives to enforcement of China's one-child policy in the 1990s
A Nature study found that stronger promotion-related incentives for local officials accounted for nearly half of China's fertility decline during the 1990s, the authors reported.
The researchers examined provincial variation in the adoption of a policy that penalized officials' career advancement when family-planning targets were missed. They concluded that the incentives intensified enforcement of the one-child policy.
The study estimated that the policy accounted for about half of China's total fertility-rate decline in the 1990s. It is a historical analysis rather than a report of a current policy change.