Economics: Was China`s One-Child Policy Really So Bad?

(Drivebycuriosity) - There is much lamentation about China`s One-Child-Per Family policy. Was it really so bad?

"China's one-child policy significantly influenced population growth by dramatically slowing it. The policy, implemented in 1979 and ending in 2016, is credited by the Chinese government with preventing an estimated 400 million births.", says Google´s AI (google ).

We don´t know how accurate the official numbers are. But if China had kept the original population growth the country today might have some hundred million people more. A higher population growth might have led to more economic growth, but not very much because the construction of the necessary infrastructure (railways, streets, energy plants etc. ) got already stressed. So, without the One-Child policy China would have to feed more people; as a result the incomes per capita (GDP divided by population size) and living standards would be lower. Would the Chinese be happier?

If China today would have a far larger population, the country would emit even more greenhouse gases, making the global warming issue even more severe. 

If China would have continued an unconstrained population growth the country would today consume more oil, more rice, pork, more of everything. The global prices of oil, rice, pork and many other commodities might be higher today and slowing global growth.

It seems that China did the world a favor. We should be grateful for that!