The
one-child policy refers to the one-child limitation applying to a minority of families in the
population controlHuman population control is the practice of artificially altering the rate of growth of a human population.Historically, human population control has been implemented by limiting the population's birth rate, usually by government mandate, and has been undertaken as a response to factors including...
policy of the
People's Republic of ChinaChina , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
(PRC). The Chinese government refers to it under the official translation of
family planning policy. It officially restricts married, urban couples to having only one child, while allowing exemptions for several cases, including rural couples, ethnic minorities, and parents without any siblings themselves. A spokesperson of the Committee on the One-Child Policy has said that approximately 35.9% of China's population is currently subject to the one-child restriction. The Special Administrative Regions of
Hong KongHong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
and
MacauMacau , also spelled Macao , is, along with Hong Kong, one of the two special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China...
are completely exempt from the policy. Also exempt from this law are foreigners living in China.
The policy was introduced in 1978 and initially applied to first-born children in the year of 1978. It was created by the Chinese government to alleviate social, economic, and environmental problems in China, and authorities claim that the policy has prevented between 250 and 300 million births from its implementation until 2000, and 400 million births from 1979 to 2011. The policy is controversial both within and outside China because of the manner in which the policy has been implemented, and because of concerns about negative social consequences. The policy has been implicated in an increase in forced
abortionAbortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
s, female infanticide, and underreporting of female births, and has been suggested as a possible cause behind China's
gender imbalanceIn anthropology and demography, the human sex ratio is the sex ratio for Homo sapiens . Like most sexual species, the sex ratio is approximately 1:1. In humans the secondary sex ratio is commonly assumed to be 105 boys to 100 girls, an assumption that is a subject of debate in the scientific...
. Nonetheless, a 2008 survey undertaken by the Pew Research Center reported that 76% of the Chinese population supports the policy.
The policy is enforced at the provincial level through fines that are imposed based on the income of the family and other factors. Population and Family Planning Commissions exist at every level of government to raise awareness about the issue and carry out registration and inspection work. Despite this policy, there are still many citizens that continue to have more than one child.
In 2008, China's
National Population and Family Planning CommissionNational Population and Family Planning Commission is the state agency responsible for population and family planning in the People's Republic of China.-Administration:The agency is managed by a minister and four vice ministers.-List of Chair:...
said that the policy will remain in place for at least another decade. In 2010, it was announced that the majority of the citizens first subject to the policy are no longer of reproductive age and it has been speculated that many citizens simply disregard or violate the policy in more recent years. Still, the deputy director of the Commission stated that the policy would remain unaltered until at least 2015. In March 2011, the Chinese government reviewed the policy and expressed considerations to allow for couples to have a second child.
Overview
In order to address
overpopulationOverpopulation is a condition where an organism's numbers exceed the carrying capacity of its habitat. The term often refers to the relationship between the human population and its environment, the Earth...
, the one-child policy promotes one-child families and forbids couples from having more than one child in urban areas. Parents with multiple children are not given the same benefits as parents of one child. In most cases, wealthy families pay a fee to the government in order to have a second child or more.
Current status
The limit has been strongly enforced in urban areas, but the actual implementation varies from location to location. In most rural areas, families are allowed to apply to have a second child if the first is a girl, or has a
physical disabilityA disability may be physical, cognitive, mental, sensory, emotional, developmental or some combination of these.Many people would rather be referred to as a person with a disability instead of handicapped...
,
mental illnessA mental disorder or mental illness is a psychological or behavioral pattern generally associated with subjective distress or disability that occurs in an individual, and which is not a part of normal development or culture. Such a disorder may consist of a combination of affective, behavioural,...
or
mental retardationMental retardation is a generalized disorder appearing before adulthood, characterized by significantly impaired cognitive functioning and deficits in two or more adaptive behaviors...
. Second children are subject to birth spacing (usually 3 or 4 years). Additional children will result in large fines: families violating the policy are required to pay monetary penalties and might be denied bonuses at their workplace. Children born in overseas countries are not counted under the policy if they do not obtain
Chinese citizenshipThe Nationality Law of the People's Republic of China regulates citizenship in the People's Republic of China . Such citizenship is obtained by birth when at least one parent is of Chinese nationality or by naturalization....
. Chinese citizens returning from abroad can have a second child.
As of 2007, 35.9% of the population were subject to a strict one-child limit. 52.9% were permitted to have a second child when the couple's first child is a girl; 9.6% of Chinese couples were permitted two children, regardless of their gender; and 1.6% - mainly Tibetans - had no limit at all.
The social fostering or maintenance fee sometimes called in the West a family planning fine, is collected as a multiple of either the annual disposable income of city dwellers or the annual cash income of peasants as determined each year by the local statistics office. The fine for a child born above the birth quota that year is thus a multiple of, depending upon the locality, either urban resident disposable income or peasant cash income estimated that year by the local statistics. So a fine for a child born ten years ago is based on the income estimate for the year of the child's birth and not of the current year. They also have to pay for both the children to go to school and all the family's health care. Some children who are in one-child families pay less than the children in other families. The one child policy was designed from the outset to be a one generation policy.
The one-child policy is now enforced at the
provincial levelA province, in the context of Chinese government, is a translation of sheng formally provincial level divisions, which is an administrative division. Provinces, municipalities, autonomous regions, and the special administrative regions, make up the four types of province of administrative division...
, and enforcement varies; some provinces have relaxed the restrictions. Many provinces and cities, such as
HenanHenan , is a province of the People's Republic of China, located in the central part of the country. Its one-character abbreviation is "豫" , named after Yuzhou , a Han Dynasty state that included parts of Henan...
and
BeijingBeijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
, permit two "only child" parents to have two children. As early as 1987, official policy granted local officials the flexibility to make exceptions and allow second children in the case of "practical difficulties" (such as cases in which the father is a disabled serviceman) or when both parents are single children, and some provinces had other exemptions worked into their policies as well. Following the
2008 Sichuan earthquakeThe 2008 Sichuan earthquake or the Great Sichuan Earthquake was a deadly earthquake that measured at 8.0 Msand 7.9 Mw occurred at 14:28:01 CST...
, a new exception to the regulations was announced in Sichuan province for parents who had lost children in the earthquake. Similar exceptions have previously been made for parents of severely disabled or deceased children.
Moreover, in accordance with PRC's
affirmative actionAffirmative action refers to policies that take factors including "race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or national origin" into consideration in order to benefit an underrepresented group, usually as a means to counter the effects of a history of discrimination.-Origins:The term...
policies towards ethnic minorities, all non-
HanHan Chinese are an ethnic group native to China and are the largest single ethnic group in the world.Han Chinese constitute about 92% of the population of the People's Republic of China , 98% of the population of the Republic of China , 78% of the population of Singapore, and about 20% of the...
ethnic groups are subjected to different rules and are usually allowed to have two children in urban areas, and three or four in rural areas. Han Chinese living in rural areas, also, are often permitted to have two children. Because of couples such as these, as well as urban couples who simply pay a fine (or "social maintenance fee") to have more children, the overall fertility rate of mainland China is closer to two children per family than to one child per family (1.8 in 2008). The steepest drop in fertility occurred in the 1970s before one child per family was implemented in 1979. Population policies and campaigns have been ongoing in China since the 1950s. During the 1970s, a campaign of 'One is good, two is okay, and three is too many' was heavily promoted.
In April 2007 a study by the
University of California, IrvineThe University of California, Irvine , founded in 1965, is one of the ten campuses of the University of California, located in Irvine, California, USA...
, which claimed to be the first systematic study of the policy, found that it had proved "remarkably effective". Other reports have shown population aging and negative population growth in some areas.
An advocacy group, composed of academics inside and outside China, has studied the policy since 2001. That group distributed a report in 2004, documenting the policy's effects on age and gender distribution, but government response was not favorable. The group distributed another report in 2009, but the government has stated that the policy will not change until 2015 at the earliest.
Effects on population growth and fertility rate
After the introduction of the one-child policy, the
fertility rateThe total fertility rate of a population is the average number of children that would be born to a woman over her lifetime if she were to experience the exact current age-specific fertility rates through her lifetime, and she...
in China fell from over three births per woman in 1980 (already a sharp reduction from more than five births per woman in the early 1970s) to approximately 1.8 in 2008 and 1.54 in 2011.
The Chinese government estimated that it had three to four hundred million fewer people in 2008 with the one-child policy, than it would have had otherwise. Chinese authorities thus consider the policy as a great success in helping to implement China's current economic growth. The reduction in the fertility rate and thus population growth has reduced the severity of problems that come with overpopulation, like epidemics, slums, overwhelmed social services (such as health, education, law enforcement), and strain on the ecosystem from abuse of fertile land and production of high volumes of waste. Even with the one-child policy in place, China still has one million more births than deaths every five weeks.
Impact on health care
It is reported that the focus of China on population control helps provide a better health service for women and a reduction in the risks of death and injury associated with pregnancy. At family planning offices, women receive free contraception and pre-natal classes.
Increased savings rate
The individual savings rate has increased since the one-child policy was introduced. This has been partially attributed to the policy in two respects. First, the average Chinese household expends fewer resources, both in terms of time and money, on children, which gives many Chinese more money with which to invest. Second, since young Chinese can no longer rely on children to care for them in their old age, there is an impetus to save money for the future.
Economic growth
The original intent of the one-child policy was economic, to reduce the demand of natural resources, maintaining a steady labor rate, reducing
unemploymentUnemployment , as defined by the International Labour Organization, occurs when people are without jobs and they have actively sought work within the past four weeks...
caused from surplus labor, and reducing the rate of exploitation. The CPC's justification for this policy was based on their support of
Mao ZedongMao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
's supposedly Marxist theory of population growth, though Marx was actually witheringly critical of
MalthusianismMalthusianism refers primarily to ideas derived from the political/economic thought of Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus, as laid out initially in his 1798 writings, An Essay on the Principle of Population, which describes how unchecked population growth is exponential while the growth of the food...
.
Other available policy alternatives
One type of criticism has come from those who acknowledge the challenges stemming from China's high population growth but believe that less intrusive options, including those that emphasized delay and spacing of births, could have achieved the same results over an extended period of time. Susan Greenhalgh's (2003) review of the policy-making process behind the adoption of the OCPF shows that some of these alternatives were known but not fully considered by China's political leaders.
Policy benefits exaggerated
Another criticism is directed at the exaggerated claimed effects of the policy on the reduction in the
total fertility rateThe total fertility rate of a population is the average number of children that would be born to a woman over her lifetime if she were to experience the exact current age-specific fertility rates through her lifetime, and she...
. Studies by Chinese demographers, funded in part by the
UN Fund for Population ActivitiesThe United Nations Population Fund is a UN organization. The work of the UNFPA involves promotion of the right of every woman, man and child to enjoy a life of health and equal opportunity. This is done through major national and demographic surveys and with population censuses...
, showed that combining poverty alleviation and health care with relaxed targets for
family planningFamily planning is the planning of when to have children, and the use of birth control and other techniques to implement such plans. Other techniques commonly used include sexuality education, prevention and management of sexually transmitted infections, pre-conception counseling and...
was more effective at reducing fertility than vigorous enforcement of very ambitious fertility reduction targets. In 1988, Zeng Yi and Professor T. Paul Schultz of
Yale UniversityYale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
discussed the effect of the transformation to the market on Chinese fertility, arguing that the introduction of the contract responsibility system in agriculture during the early 1980s weakened family planning controls during that period. Zeng contended that the "big cooking pot" system of the
People's CommuneThe people's commune was the highest of three administrative levels in rural areas of the People's Republic of China during the period of 1958 to 1982-85 until they were replaced by townships. Communes, the largest collective units, were divided in turn into production brigades and production teams...
s had insulated people from the costs of having many children. By the late 1980s, economic costs and incentives created by the contract system were already reducing the number of children farmers wanted.
As Hasketh, Lu, and Xing observe: "[T]he policy itself is probably only partially responsible for the reduction in the total fertility rate. The most dramatic decrease in the rate actually occurred before the policy was imposed. Between 1970 and 1979, the largely voluntary "late, long, few" policy, which called for later childbearing, greater spacing between children, and fewer children, had already resulted in a halving of the
total fertility rateThe total fertility rate of a population is the average number of children that would be born to a woman over her lifetime if she were to experience the exact current age-specific fertility rates through her lifetime, and she...
, from 5.9 to 2.9. After the one-child policy was introduced, there was a more gradual fall in the rate until 1995, and it has more or less stabilized at approximately 1.7 since then." These researchers note further that China could have expected a continued reduction in its fertility rate just from continued economic development, had it kept to the previous policy.
Human rights
The one-child policy is challenged in principle and in practice for violating a human right to determine the size of one's own family. A 2001 report exposed that a quota of 20,000 abortions and sterilizations was set for
Huaiji County in
Guangdong ProvinceGuangdong is a province on the South China Sea coast of the People's Republic of China. The province was previously often written with the alternative English name Kwangtung Province...
in one year due to reported disregard of the one-child policy. The effort included using portable ultrasound devices to identify abortion candidates in remote villages. Earlier reports also show that women as far along as 8.5 months pregnant were forced to
abort by injection of saline solutionInstillation abortion is a rarely used method of induced abortion, performed in the second trimester, by injecting a solution into the uterus to cause uterine contractions.-Procedure:...
. There have also been reports of women, in their 9th month of pregnancy or already in labour, having their children killed whilst in the birth canal or immediately after birth.
In 2002, China outlawed the use of physical force to make a woman submit to an abortion or sterilization, but it is not entirely enforced. In the execution of the policy, many local governments still demand abortions if the pregnancy violates local regulations.
Although China has had a reputation for heavy-handed
eugenicsEugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
policies as part of its population planning policies, the government has backed away from such policies recently, as evidenced by China's ratification of the
Convention on the Rights of Persons with DisabilitiesThe Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is an international human rights instrument of the United Nations intended to protect the rights and dignity of persons with disabilities...
, which compels the nation to significantly reform its genetic testing laws. Recent scholarship has also emphasized the necessity of understanding a myriad of complex social relations that affect the meaning of
informed consentInformed consent is a phrase often used in law to indicate that the consent a person gives meets certain minimum standards. As a literal matter, in the absence of fraud, it is redundant. An informed consent can be said to have been given based upon a clear appreciation and understanding of the...
in China. Furthermore, in 2003, China revised its marriage registration regulations and couples no longer have to submit to a pre-marital physical or genetic examination before being granted a marriage license.
The
United Nations Population FundThe United Nations Population Fund is a UN organization. The work of the UNFPA involves promotion of the right of every woman, man and child to enjoy a life of health and equal opportunity. This is done through major national and demographic surveys and with population censuses...
's (UNFPA) funding for this policy is heavily criticized in the United States. The
United States CongressThe United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
pulled out of the UNFPA during the Reagan years, and U.S. President
George W. BushGeorge Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
referred to human rights abuses as his reason for stopping the US$40 million payment to the UNFPA in early 2002. In early 2003 the U.S. State Department issued a press release stating that they would not continue to support the UNFPA in its present form because they believed that, at the very least, coercive birth limitation practices were not being properly addressed. The U.S. government has stated that the right to "found a family" is protected under the Preamble in the
Universal Declaration of Human RightsThe Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly . The Declaration arose directly from the experience of the Second World War and represents the first global expression of rights to which all human beings are inherently entitled...
. This, coupled with the
International Conference on Population and DevelopmentThe United Nations coordinated an International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Egypt from 5–13 September 1994. Its resulting Program of Action is the steering document for the United Nations Population Fund ....
's view that it is the right of the individual, not the state, to determine the number of children, represents a clear conflict between China's policy and U.S. accepted and adopted human rights conventions.
President
ObamaBarack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
resumed U.S. government financial support for the UNFPA shortly after taking office in 2009. Obama said, "I look forward to working with Congress to restore U.S. financial support for the U.N. Population Fund. By resuming funding to UNFPA, the U.S. will be joining 180 other donor nations working collaboratively to reduce poverty, improve the health of women and children, prevent HIV/AIDS and provide
family planningFamily planning is the planning of when to have children, and the use of birth control and other techniques to implement such plans. Other techniques commonly used include sexuality education, prevention and management of sexually transmitted infections, pre-conception counseling and...
assistance to women in 154 countries."
The "four-two-one" problem
As the first generation of law-enforced only children came of age for becoming parents themselves, one adult child was left with having to provide support for his or her two parents and four grandparents. Called the "4-2-1 Problem", this leaves the older generations with increased chances of dependency on retirement funds or charity in order to receive support. If personal savings, pensions, or state welfare fail, most senior citizens would be left entirely dependent upon their very small family or neighbours for assistance. If, for any reason, the single child is unable to care for their older adult relatives, the oldest generations would face a lack of resources and necessities. In response to such an issue, certain provinces maintained that couples were allowed to have two children if both parents were only children themselves. By 2007, all provinces in the nation except
HenanHenan , is a province of the People's Republic of China, located in the central part of the country. Its one-character abbreviation is "豫" , named after Yuzhou , a Han Dynasty state that included parts of Henan...
had adopted this new adaptation; Henan followed in 2011.
Possible social problems for a generation of only children
Some parents may over-indulge their only child. The media referred to the indulged children in one-child families as "little emperors". Since the 1990s, some people have worried that this will result in a higher tendency toward poor social communication and cooperation skills among the new generation, as they have no siblings at home. No social studies have investigated the ratio of these over-indulged children and to what extent they are indulged. With the first generation of children born under the policy (which initially became a requirement for most couples with first children born starting in 1979 and extending into 1980s) reaching adulthood, such worries were reduced. However, the "little emperor syndrome" and additional expressions, describing the generation of Chinese singletons are very abundant in the Chinese media, Chinese academy and popular discussions. Being over-indulged, lacking self discipline and having no adaptive capabilities are adjectives which are highly associated with Chinese singletons,
Some 30 delegates called on the government in the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) in March 2007 to abolish the one-child rule, attributing their beliefs to "social problems and personality disorders in young people". One statement read, "It is not healthy for children to play only with their parents and be spoiled by them: it is not right to limit the number to two children per family, either." The proposal was prepared by Ye Tingfang, a professor at the
Chinese Academy of Social SciencesThe Chinese Academy of Social Sciences , established in 1977, is the premier and highest academic research organization in the fields of philosophy and social sciences as well as a national center for comprehensive studies in the People's Republic of China. It was described by Foreign Policy...
, who suggested that the government at least restore the previous rule that allowed couples to have up to two children. According to a scholar, "The one-child limit is too extreme. It violates nature’s law. And in the long run, this will lead to mother nature’s revenge."
Unequal enforcement
Government officials and especially wealthy individuals have often been able to violate the policy in spite of fines. For example, between 2000 and 2005, as many as 1,968 officials in central China's
Hunan' is a province of South-Central China, located to the south of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River and south of Lake Dongting...
province were found to be violating the policy, according to the provincial family planning commission; also exposed by the commission were 21 national and local lawmakers, 24 political advisors, 112 entrepreneurs and 6 senior intellectuals. Some of the offending officials did not face penalties, although the government did respond by raising fines and calling on local officials to "expose the celebrities and high-income people who violate the family planning policy and have more than one child."
Effects on female population
China, like many other Asian countries, has a long tradition of son preference. The commonly accepted explanation for son preference is that sons in rural families may be thought to be more helpful in farm work. Both rural and urban populations have economic and traditional incentives, including widespread remnants of
ConfucianismConfucianism is a Chinese ethical and philosophical system developed from the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius . Confucianism originated as an "ethical-sociopolitical teaching" during the Spring and Autumn Period, but later developed metaphysical and cosmological elements in the Han...
, to prefer sons over daughters. Sons are preferred as they provide the primary financial support for the parents in their retirement, and a son's parents typically are better cared for than his wife's. In addition, Chinese traditionally hold that daughters, on their marriage, become primarily part of the groom's family. Male-to-female sex ratios in the current Chinese population are high in both rural and urban areas.
Gender-based birth rate disparity
The
sex ratioIn anthropology and demography, the human sex ratio is the sex ratio for Homo sapiens . Like most sexual species, the sex ratio is approximately 1:1. In humans the secondary sex ratio is commonly assumed to be 105 boys to 100 girls, an assumption that is a subject of debate in the scientific...
at birth (between male and female births) in
mainland ChinaMainland China, the Chinese mainland or simply the mainland, is a geopolitical term that refers to the area under the jurisdiction of the People's Republic of China . According to the Taipei-based Mainland Affairs Council, the term excludes the PRC Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and...
reached 117:100 in the year 2000, substantially higher than the natural baseline, which ranges between 103:100 and 107:100. It had risen from 108:100 in 1981—at the boundary of the natural baseline—to 111:100 in 1990. According to a report by the State Population and Family Planning Commission, there will be 30 million more men than women in 2020, potentially leading to social instability, and courtship-motivated
emigrationEmigration is the act of leaving one's country or region to settle in another. It is the same as immigration but from the perspective of the country of origin. Human movement before the establishment of political boundaries or within one state is termed migration. There are many reasons why people...
. The correlation between the increase of
sex ratioSex ratio is the ratio of males to females in a population. The primary sex ratio is the ratio at the time of conception, secondary sex ratio is the ratio at time of birth, and tertiary sex ratio is the ratio of mature organisms....
disparity on birth and the deployment of one child policy would appear to have been caused by the one-child policy.
Other Asian regions also have higher than average ratios, including
TaiwanTaiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
(110:100) and
South KoreaThe Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...
(108:100), which do not have a family planning policy and the ratio in South Korea was as high as 116:100 in the early 1990s but since then has moved substantially back toward a normal range, with a ratio of 107:100 in 2005. Many studies have explored the reason for the gender-based birth rate disparity in China as well as other countries. A study in 1990 attributed the high preponderance of reported male births in mainland China to four main causes: diseases which affect females more severely than males; the result of widespread underreporting of female births; the illegal practice of
sex-selective abortionSex-selective abortion is the practice of terminating a pregnancy based upon the predicted sex of the baby. The selective abortion of female fetuses is most common in areas where cultural norms value male children over female children, especially in parts of People's Republic of China, India,...
made possible by the widespread availability of
ultrasoundObstetric sonography is the application of medical ultrasonography to obstetrics, in which sonography is used to visualize the embryo or foetus in its mother's uterus...
; and finally, acts of child abandonment and infanticide. The number of bachelors in China had already increased between 1990 and 2005, implying that China's lack of brides is not solely linked to the one-child policy, as single-child families were only enforced from 1979.
In a recent paper, Emily Oster (2005) proposed a biological explanation for the gender imbalance in Asian countries, including China. Using data on viral prevalence by country as well as estimates of the effect of hepatitis on sex ratio, Oster claimed that Hepatitis B could account for up to 75% of the gender disparity in China.
Monica Das Gupta (2005) has shown that "whether or not females 'go missing' is determined by the existing sex composition of the family into which they are conceived. Girls with no older sisters have similar chances of survival as boys. Girls conceived in families that already have a daughter, experience steeply higher probabilities of being aborted or of dying in early childhood. Gupta claims that cultural factors provide the overwhelming explanation for the "missing" females."
The disparity in the sex ratio at birth increases dramatically after the first birth, for which the ratios remained steadily within the natural baseline over the 20 year interval between 1980 and 1999. Thus, a large majority of couples appear to accept the outcome of the first pregnancy, whether it is a boy or a girl. If the first child is a girl, and they are able to have a second child, then a couple may take extraordinary steps to assure that the second child is a boy. If a couple already has two or more boys, the sex ratio of higher parity births swings decidedly in a feminine direction.
This demographic evidence indicates that while families highly value having male offspring, a secondary norm of having a girl or having some balance in the sexes of children often comes into play. For example, Zeng et al. (1993) reported a study based on the 1990 census in which they found sex ratios of just 65 or 70 boys per 100 girls for births in families that already had two or more boys. A study by Anderson and Silver (1995) found a similar pattern among both Han and non-Han nationalities in Xinjiang Province: a strong preference for girls in high
parityIn biology, parity is a technical term that refers to the number of times a female has given birth to a fetus.It can lead to some ambiguity for events occurring between 20 and 24 weeks, and for multiple pregnancies.-Enumeration:...
births in families that had already borne two or more boys. This evidence is consistent with the observation by another researcher that for a majority of rural families "their ideal family size is one boy and one girl, at most two boys and one girl".
A 2006 review article by the Editorial Board of Population Research , one of China's leading demography journals, argued that only an approach that makes the rights of women central can succeed in bringing down China's high gender ratio at birth and improve the survival rate of female infants and girls. A section written by
East China Normal UniversityEast China Normal University , was founded in October 1951 in western Shanghai, on the campus of Great China University. It is the first Normal University founded after the establishment of the People's Republic of China.-History:...
demography professor Ci Qinying, "Research on the Sex Ratio at Birth Should Take a Gender Discrimination Approach," argued that researchers must pay closer attention to gender issues in demography, and a human rights perspective in demographic research is crucial.
The authors of another review article, "Girl Survival in China: History, Present Situation and Prospects," which was presented at a 2005 conference supported by the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA), concluded that "The Chinese government has already set the goal of achieving a normal gender ratio at birth by 2010, and to achieve preliminary results in establishing a new cultural outlook on marriage and having children. The government is working to change the system, way of thinking and other obstacles to attacking the root of the problem. Only if equality of males and females is strongly promoted ... will the harmonious and sustainable development of society be possible."
Abandoned or orphaned children and adoption
The social pressure exerted by the one-child policy has affected the rate at which parents abandon undesirable children, and many live in state-sponsored orphanages, from which thousands are adopted internationally and by Chinese parents each year. In the 1980s and early 1990s, poor care and high mortality rates in some state institutions generated intense international pressure for reform.
According to Sten Johansson and Ola Nygren (1991) adoptions accounted for half of the so-called "missing girls" in the 1980s in the PRC. Through the 1980s, as the one-child policy came into force, parents who desired a son but bore a daughter in some cases failed to report or delayed the reporting of the birth of the girl to the authorities. But rather than neglecting or abandoning unwanted girls, the parents may have offered them up for formal or informal adoption. A majority of children who went through formal adoption in China in the later 1980s were girls, and the proportion who were girls increased over time (Johansson and Nygren 1991).
The practice of adopting out unwanted girls is consistent with both the son preference of many Chinese couples and the findings of Zeng et al. (1993) and Anderson and Silver (1995) that under some circumstances families have a preference for girls, in particular when they have already satisfied their goals for sons. Research by Weiguo Zhang (2006) on child adoption in rural China reveals increasing receptivity to adopting girls, including by infertile and childless couples.
In 1992, China instituted its first Adoption Law. Officially registered adoptions increased from about 2,000 in 1992 to 55,000 in 2001. According to one scholar, these figures "represent a small proportion of adoptions in China because many adopted children were adopted informally without official registrations. International adoption rates climbed dramatically after the early 1990s, increasing to the U.S. alone from about 200 in 1992 to more than 7,900 in 2005.
According to the
Los Angeles TimesThe Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
, many babies put up for adoption had not been abandoned by their parents, but confiscated by family planning officials.
Infanticide
Gender-selected abortion, abandonment, and
infanticideInfanticide or infant homicide is the killing of a human infant. Neonaticide, a killing within 24 hours of a baby's birth, is most commonly done by the mother.In many past societies, certain forms of infanticide were considered permissible...
are illegal in China. Nevertheless, the US State Department, the
Parliament of the United KingdomThe Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body in the United Kingdom, British Crown dependencies and British overseas territories, located in London...
, and the
human rightsHuman rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
organization
Amnesty InternationalAmnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
have all declared that China's family planning programs contribute to infanticide.
Anthropologist G. William Skinner at the University of California-Davis and Chinese researcher Yuan Jianhua have claimed that infanticide was fairly common in China before the 1990s.
Fertility medicines
A 2006
China DailyThe China Daily is an English language daily newspaper published in the People's Republic of China.- Overview :China Daily was established in June 1981 and has the widest print circulation of any English-language newspaper in the country...
report stated that wealthy couples are increasingly turning to fertility medicines to have
multiple birthA multiple birth occurs when more than one fetus is carried to term in a single pregnancy. Different names for multiple births are used, depending on the number of offspring. Common multiples are two and three, known as twins and triplets...
s, because of the lack of penalties against couples who have more than one child in their first birth; according to the report, the number of multiple births per year in China had doubled by 2006.
See also
- Demographics of the People's Republic of China
- Demographic momentum
Demographic momentum is the phenomenon of continued population increase despite reduced reproductive rates. Even in the face of extreme measures aimed at lowering reproductive rates, the population will continue to grow due to a large proportion of its population entering its reproductive years.For...
- Family planning
Family planning is the planning of when to have children, and the use of birth control and other techniques to implement such plans. Other techniques commonly used include sexuality education, prevention and management of sexually transmitted infections, pre-conception counseling and...
- Human rights in the People's Republic of China
Human rights in the People's Republic of China are a matter of dispute between the Chinese government, other countries, international NGOs, and dissidents inside the country. Organizations such as the U.S. State Department, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch have accused the Chinese...
- Only child
An only child is a person with no siblings, either biological or adopted. In a family with multiple offspring, first-borns, may be briefly considered only children and have a similar early family environment, but the term only child is generally applied only to those individuals who never have...
- Reproductive health
Within the framework of the World Health Organization's definition of health as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity, reproductive health, or sexual health/hygiene, addresses the reproductive processes, functions and system...
- Two-child policy
- Urbanization in China
Urbanization in the People's Republic of China increased in speed following the initiation of the reform and opening policy. By the end of 2010, the mainland of the People's Republic of China had a total urban population of 665.57 million or 49.68 percent of the total population.The rural-to-urban...
- Heihaizi
Heihaizi or "black children" is a term applied in China, denoting children born outside the One child policy, or generally children who are not registered in the national household registration system...
- Iron Fist Campaign
The Iron Fist Campaign was a sterilization program conducted in the summer of 2010 by family planning officials in Puning, a county in Guangdong, China.- Background :...
- Demographic trap
According to the Encyclopedia of International Development, the term demographic trap is used by demographers "to describe the combination of high fertility and declining mortality in developing countries, resulting in a period of high population growth rate ." High fertility combined with...
- Mao Hengfeng
Mao Hengfeng is a women's rights and human rights activist in the People's Republic of China. She refused to abort her third child after already having twins and was detained in an ankang and then dismissed from her job...
Further reading
- Better 10 Graves Than One Extra Birth (ISBN 1-931550-92-1, Laogai Research Foundation
The Laogai Research Foundation is a human rights NGO located in Washington, DC. The foundation's mission is to "gather information on and raise public awareness of the Laogai—China’s extensive system of forced-labor prison camps."-History:...
)
- Greenhalgh, Susan, (2008). Just One Child: Science and Policy in Deng's China (ISBN 978-0-520-25339-1, University of California Press)
External links