Why Did China’s Population Grow so Quickly?

China’s population growth rate surpassed the world average from 1949 to the late 1970s. Under Mao’s leadership, the government promoted pro-natal policies and remunerated families not according to their productivity but by the number of workers. Faced with extreme economic scarcity due to the communist regime’s poor economic policies, parents saw large families as the sole means to avoid an otherwise bleak lifestyle.