Shortage of girls in China today

The increasing use of sex-selective abortion leads to the following question: has sex-selective abortion been substituted for female infanticide? Are those parents who would previously have disposed of their newborn daughters now aborting female foetuses instead? Based on the aggregate data we have available, the answer is 'apparently not'. Of course, there must be many individual cases where a family that otherwise would have disposed of a newborn daughter has opted for sex-selective abortion instead. To the extent that this is happening, it could be argued that substitution is taking place: the option of sex-selective abortion may avert postnatal discrimination that would otherwise occur against unwanted children, and thus prevent even greater excess female infant and child mortality. But overall, the data do not suggest the phenomenon of substitution. Rather, it appears that sex-selective abortion and excess female mortality after birth are additive. Both seem to be happening simultaneously, and both may even have increased in the 1980s and 1990s (see also Goodkind 1999a; Li et al. 2004). For example, the geographical discussion below shows that there are whole provinces and regions of China where there was no shortage of girls before sex-selective abortion became available. Apparently, the subcultures in those regions did not accept female infanticide or abuse of living girls. However, it seems that the shortage of girls has emerged in those provinces because sex-selective abortion is considered acceptable. Sex-selective abortion has been added in whole sections of China where it is clearly not substituting for a previous tendency to dispose of living daughters.

Sex-selective mortality in infancy has also contributed to the shortage of girls. Table 3 calculates excess female infant mortality, based on infant deaths reported in censuses and surveys since 1982, and conservatively assuming that the normal sex ratio of infant mortality rates would be 1.2. Many normal country and model life tables show a male infant mortality rate (IMR) 1.2-1.4 times the female rate (Li and Feldman 1996). Table 3 shows that the absolute excess female IMR rose from four deaths per 1000 live births in 1981 to 12-13 in 1995 and 1999-2000. As a proportion of reported female IMR, the excess rose from 12 per cent in 1981 to 41 per cent in 1999-2000.

Table 4 gives reported sex ratios of age-specific central death rates for children by single years of age from the 1982, 1990 and 2000 censuses. A ratio below about 1.1 is abnormally low and means girls are dying excessively. In 1981, girls died at excessive rates up to age five. At ages six and older, the ratio was 1.1-1.4, which is a normal range. In 1989 and 1999-2000, reported excess mortality of girls continued only to age three. At ages four and older, the ratio was 1.1-1.5 in 1989 and 1.2-1.8 in 1999-2000. After adjustment for differential underreporting by sex, the 1999-2000 ratios are 1.4-1.5 at ages 5-9, 10-14, and 15-19, all in normal range (Banister and Hill 2004: 73). The data in Table 4 imply that in China today, girls lucky enough to survive to age four are thenceforth treated as well as their brothers with respect to survival. This is a great improvement over the continuing excess mortality throughout childhood visible in the 1953 census data.