One-child policy leaves some parents childless, hopeless and facing financial ruin in old age.

Seth Dixon‘s insight:

Population programs can have have diverse unintended consequences.  Many couples in China who have lost a child not only face the heartache of loss, but have also lost their economic future since that one child was supposed to support them in their old age.  Some elderly parents have a child, but one that does not financially support them as the cultural norms of the past would have required of the children.  These ‘orphan grandparents‘ are casualties in the changing cultural, demographic, and economic patterns in China.

See on www.washingtonpost.com