Louise Watt (correspondent in Beijing) wrote to me in a personal correspondence about this research and asked me for my response: Recently Australian researchers have explored the psychological impact of China’s one-child policy and part of that is the impact of being an only child. This was published by Science magazine in January 2013. Loiuse’s email: “They found that people born as a result of China’s one-child policy are less trusting, less competitive and more risk-averse than people born before the policy was implemented. The researchers recruited approx. 400 Beijing residents who had been born either before (in 1975 or 1978) or after (in 1980 or 1983) the implementation of the policy. They used a series of economic games, in which participants had to make economic decisions to measure their trust, risk-taking and willingness to compete. They also used personality surveys to determine that only children (as a result of [...]
