China implemented one-child policy from 1980 to 2015 (36 years).
This might be the largest social experiment that has ever been done globally.
Only-child policy is rare. Only China has done this.
The impact could be negligible for some families, as they would have had only one child anyway.
But collectively, this has significant impact – e.g. it reduced the population: two ppl turned into one people.
One consequence that many might have ignored – half of the families may “lose” their “last name”.
In China, children usually keep their father’s name. So families with only one girl as their child would “suffer” from this one-child policy.
This might be in China vs. say in the US, as Chinese last names are shared among different families but last names in the US are often unique. If there were one-child policy in the US, ultimately, half of the last names would disappear!
What a loss of culture.