The effect of the family planning policy on population loss in China's provinces

Population is a vital resource for economic development. The family planning policy up to several decades has alleviated the pressure of an increasing population at the beginning. However, China initially implemented an unbalanced development strategy, which has resulted in a large number of labor force in the eastern coastal areas of the country that in turn helped the economic development of these regions. In the future, China plans on transferring its economic center to the midwest and northeast regions, which will also require a workforce. Thus, understanding the demographic situation is a must, especially the family planning policy's contribution to population loss in these provinces. This paper uses the propensity score matching method based on GDP per capita to calculate the absolute value of population loss in China's provinces due to the family planning policy by comparing these provinces with countries that do not implement the family planning policy using a 1:4 ratio. Additionally, we calculate the population loss ratio. Until 2014, the provinces with over 10 million population loss have reached 19 and the provinces with over 50% of population loss have reached 8, which are all located in the midwest and northeast regions, where their economy is relatively stagnant.