The Demographic Impact of a Female Deficit in China, 2000-2050

摘要

THE SEX IMBALANCE at birth and in infancy and childhood that appeared in China during the 1980s is responsible for a growing deficit of females (Coale and Banister 1994; Hull 1990; Johansson and Nygren 1994; Zeng et al. 1993). Recent studies have focused chiefly on couples' prenatal and postnatal sex-selection practices (e.g., sex-selective abortion, infanticide, and abandonment of females) that have produced male surpluses at the youngest ages (Attane 2004; Banister 2004; Chu 2001; Li and Zhu 2005);on the sociocul-tural determinants of Chinese preference for sons and its consequences for the sex composition of small families (Arnold and Liu 1986; Poston 2002); and on exacerbating factors of son preference, such as fertility decline and economic reforms (Attane 2005; Poston 2002). Some authors have assessed the likely scale of the shortage of marriageable females—the marriage squeeze (Poston and Glover 2005; Tuljapurkar, Li, and Feldman 1995; Li et al. 2005)—and its consequences for individualsand society (Hudson and den Boer 2004), while others have focused on the probable impact of the female deficit on total population growth (Cai and Lavely 2003). As far as I could ascertain, however, no study has analyzed the potential consequences of continuing sex imbalances at birth on population growth, the number of births, and sex structure.