The one-child policy, coupled with market reforms launched around the same time, is credited with catalyzing China's economic transformation. With fewer bellies to feed, the government turned a hand-to-mouth society into the world's second largest economy. Today Chinese women bear, on average, around 1.5 children, according to independent estimates, compared with around 6 in the late 1960s. (For a nation to maintain its population, it needs a total fertility rate of at least 2.1 babies per woman.) By 2030, China's population is expected to peak at just short of 1.4 billion and then begin a long decline.