China's Gender Skew Ramifications

In the last decade, China’s severe gender imbalance has made headlines: millions of Chinese men are condemned to bachelorhood due to a shortage of women, with awful social consequences. The conventional wisdom is that this skewing — a sex ratio at birth far higher than the natural percentage of 105 males to 100 females — is caused simply and solely through China’s one-child policy.

Given Chinese parents’ allegedly ancient cultural preference with regard to sons, the argument goes, if they can only have one kid, it had better be a boy. That the sex ratio started skewing around 1985, about five years into the new birth planning policy, seems proof enough. The claim’s logical conclusion is that abolishing the policy will get rid of China’s sex ratio imbalance.

But some basic comparisons show us how the conventional wisdom is defective. The claim that the skewed sex ratio has occurred due to the birth planning policy usually rests on two premises: that it alone caused fertility decline and that this particular fertility decline led to a skewed sex ratio at birth. But, in fact, China’utes fertility decline began in early 1970s, years before the one-child policy. And, China’s neighbours had similar fertility declines within the 1970, even without such draconian policies.

Fertility declines also do not lead to a skewed sex percentage. Japan’s fertility rate has been among the world’s lowest for pretty much two decades, but its sex percentage at birth has remained within the natural range. While China’s skewed sex ratio of history three decades does coincide using the start of the birth planning coverage, this coincidence is somewhat deceptive. A longer historical view reveals that China’s sex percentage skew has been terrible more than much of the last two centuries.

The one-child coverage itself is a bit of a misnomer: three distinct policy variations are in place across China. Rural, majority-Han areas practice a ‘1.5-child’ policy, by which families whose first kid is a girl are allowed another in hopes of having a boy. Cities have a strict one-child limit, whilst poor ethnic-minority areas have a two-child limit.

Sex ratio skewing is higher within rural 1.5-child policy locations (about 119:100 at delivery) than in urban one-child areas (regarding 115:100), and is lowest in two-child policy areas (regarding 112:100). These numbers show that switching to a universal two-child policy would reduce but not get rid of the problem: China’s sex ratio at birth would still be higher than almost anywhere else on the planet. Therefore, there is some truth to the conventional wisdom, but the delivery planning policy is not the just important driver of intercourse ratio skewing.

The problem with the conventional wisdom is that it treats son choice as a cultural given: it says Chinese people just prefer sons. But son preference is not a constant. Incentives for Chinese families to have son’s have changed considerably over time, rising and falling together with a skewed sex ratio at birth. Therefore, initiatives to normalise China’s sex percentage at birth ought to attack existing incentives for households to have sons.

Son preference incentives appear in four realms: labour, property ownership and gift of money, ritual life, and old-age protection. Societies with strong bonuses in these areas tend to have the skewed sex ratio. Indeed, differences in the sex ratio at birth parallel variations in levels of son preference incentives through time, across regions of China and across countries. Old-age security seems to be the most important driver of son preference, while ritual-related incentives matter less.

There was a skewness of China’s sex ratio from birth before 1960, it was normal during 1960–85 and skewed again after 85. In both periods of high skewing, sons were highly necessary on all four measures: for farm labour, property inheritance, ancestor worship and old-age care. In comparison, during the communist era (approximately 1958–83), production was socialised, property was collectivised, ancestor worship was suppressed and pensions for the elderly were provided by the commune. Families didn’t require sons, and so they experienced little incentive to practice feminine infanticide or abandonment.

Since the mid-1980s, boy preference incentives have differed starkly between urban and rural regions of China. In urban areas, educated women make important economic contributions to their birth families and are thus able to supply old-age care for their parents. Ancestor praise is also less relevant to city life compared to rural areas, while urban women additionally share equally in property and inheritance. Altogether, these factors mean that urban families have less incentive than rural types to prefer sons.

The intercourse ratio at birth has also changed along with son choice incentives in Japan as well as South Korea. Japan scores low on our measures of son preference throughout the 20th century. Women contribute meaningfully to family income and inherit property similarly, and Japan has superb old-age pensions. While sons tend to be strongly preferred for family rituals, Japan’s sex ratio from birth does not skew.  Like a second example, South Korea noticed a sharp increase in sex percentage skewing in the mid-1980s, followed by a decrease after 1995. This normalisation coincided along with changes in South Korean family law specifying that women did not have to marry into their husbands’ families, had equal rights and responsibilities within ancestor worship and equal inheritance rights.

Normalising China’s skewed sex ratio will require a serious effort to reduce son preference, targeting policies and institutions that create these incentives. Merely haranguing Chinese citizens to change their own ‘backward’ ways of thinking and culture will not suffice.

Don’t blame China’s skewed sex ratio on the one-child policy is republished with permission from East Asia Forum