A policy that addresses a social problem

China’s one-child policy was introduced in 1980 with the intention of reducing population growth rates and, consequently, fertility rates. Initially, the policy appears to have been successful as fertility rates fell below 2.1 children per woman in 1985 (Liu et al., 2014). However, recent studies indicate that the policy has not had a lasting impact on fertility trends; rather it has simply delayed them (Zhang et al., 2018).