Twenty-five years of the One-Child Family Policy in China: problems and future prospects.

Praised for saving China from a demographic catastrophe or blamed as a violation of a basic human right, the one child family policy (OCFP) is reaching its 25th year and a recent law1 has confirmed this demographic strategy for the future. The government decision to limit the number of children to one per couple, taken in 1979, was a response to the threat that the country’s massive demographic growth cast on the future of economic development and of living conditions of the Chinese people.