DAFENG, China — When asked why she and her husband don’t want a second child, Shi Xiaomei smiles at her pudgy 9-year-old son and does a quick tally of the family budget. Her salary as a cleaning lady and the income from a mahjong parlor in their spare room barely cover their son’s school fees and other expenses. “With just one, we can give him nicer things. But if you tried to split what we have between two or three, they would all end up with nothing,” the 34-year-old says at her home in Dafeng, a prosperous but still-rural county 185 miles (300 kilometers) north of Shanghai.
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