Photograph by Holly Wilmeth/Aurora Photos
In China, having a second child can cost a year's salary in fines
By Dexter Roberts, April 19, 2012, Bloomberg Businessweek
Molly Zhang, a 31-year-old account manager in the lighting industry, just had her second son. Now she has to pay a fine likely to total 30,000 yuan ($4,760), roughly equal to her annual salary, for violating China’s one-child policy. “Even for an average white-collar worker in Dongguan, this is a lot of money. But I didn’t want to have just one child,” says Zhang, adding that paying the penalty is necessary to get her child a household registration document, without which education and employment would be impossible.
Last year’s publication of China’s 2010 census, which revealed a much more pronounced decline in births than previously estimated, galvanized 20 or so of China’s top demographers, sociologists, and economists to advocate ending the one-child policy. “It is time to think about removing this policy decided 30 years ago—China’s situation has changed so much,” says Gu Baochang, a demographer at Renmin University of China in Beijing and one of the informal leaders of the group, which has twice submitted petitions to China’s top leaders urging them to reform or end the policy.
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