New York Notebook

Companies in the United States were jubilant when Beijing announced in late October that it would end nearly 40 years of population suppression. Share prices of several companies that produce consumer goods for infants surged with the news. Investors expect that a new boom in Chinese births will boost sales in the world’s largest country. The celebration, however, may be misguided. The horrific legacy of the one-child policy is unlikely to disappear overnight.

Launched in 1979 to slowdown the growth of the country’s population due to fears that it could not feed its people, the one-child policy has created birth-rate distortions that cannot be undone. Since 2010, China’s working population has begun shrinking due to the law, and the pace of this trend is set to increase. The Communist Party leadership has been aware of this for years, and the decision to put a blanket stop to the policy is just the last in a series of steps aimed at addressing the problem (in 2013 Beijing had already allowed some couples to have an extra baby as long as one partner was a single child).

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