Impacts of China’s One-child Policy on Public Health in China: An Overview

摘要

In 2015, China lifted its one-child policy and replaced it with a universal two-child policy that became effective on January 1, 2016.The one-child policy, introduced in 1979 to strictly reduce population growth in the country, had profound impacts not only on population growth control, but also on public health and many other aspects affecting population health.In this article, we review its positive impacts on public health in China, such as greatly improved health status in the country, most likely due to the combination of the one-child policy and the economic reform that started approximately the same time.We also discussed several undesirable outcomes, such as skewed sex ratio and aging population.Finally, we proposed potential strategies to compliment the newly implemented two-child policy.