Given the high sex ratio in recent China population report, the abnormally excessive male birth exemplifies the persistence of son preference on women’s fertility behavior. Son preference rooted in Chinese agriculture-based economy and historical feudalism, in consistence with the reliance on laborers and continuing the family line. Older people prefer to depend on their sons to get financial and physical support, while daughters are regarded as property of their husband’s family since the day of marriage.
However, the wish of having multiple children, especially boys, was challenged by the strict One Child policy in 1979. The One Child policy, also known as Family Planning policy, was implemented across the country as one of fundamental
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The variables are having siblings or not, siblings’ age and gender, to figure out if the siblings distracted parents’ attention and investment.
Key Finding
Although, the first two articles written by Li and Cooney (1993), Merli and Smith (2000) began with a similar question on people’s acceptance to One Child policy , ultimately they obtained two contrary conclusions. In accordance with the demographic survey, Li and Conney (1993) concluded that the One Child policy did not remove the discrimination completely, son preference still existed and expanded in many other shapes, for example, some women checked the sex of fetuses by ultrasound and used abortion as a backup method to prevent from the wasting of birth quota if the fetus is female (Kristof 1993). In addition, the regional developmental level and family socioeconomic conditions which were initially taken in proportion to the compliance degree of One Child policy have found negligible and irrelevant. Specifically, it turned out son preference rooted in not only those families with low income and education, but also privileged families holding wealth and highly educated. This opinion, whereas, was opposed with Merli and Smith’s second report in 2000 which insisted the undeniable contribution of regional development and governmental
This policy contrasts with the government policy in Romania in the 1980s where the former communist government attempted to increase the birth rate by putting restrictions on contraception and abortion, setting up fertility centres, making divorce more difficult to obtain and forcing childless couples to pay an extra 5% income tax. This was set up to increase the population and therefore increase the size families in Romania. In China, there was a one child policy to reduce population size and discouraged couples from having more than one child. According to Adrian Wilson (1985) the policy is supervised by workplace family planning committees, women must seek permission to try and become to try to become pregnant, and there is a waiting list and a quota for each factory. Couples who comply with the policy get extra benefits such as free health care and higher tax allowances, An only child will also get priority in education and housing in later life. Couples who break the agreement must repay their allowances and pay a fine. Women are also faced the pressure to undergo sterilization after their first child. This encourages people to have one child and therefore affects family life by controlling family size through this policy.
Since 1980, China has made its people the subject of an intrusive and unfair, One Child Policy. This policy was the result of Chinese officials becoming worried of the countries jump in population from 1960 to 1980 causing a widespread lack of resources, so they decided to induct a law that would make force Chinese citizens to be limited to one child. Because of this controversial policy the question has been raised, did the one child policy positively or negatively effect China? The one child policy did negatively effect China and its people, because it resulted in gender discrimination, unjust punishments and was unnecessary due to the already declining fertility rate.
The final reason that the one-child policy was a bad idea is because of the fact that China’s fertility rate was already decreasing and was one of the lowest rates compared to Brazil, South Korea, and Thailand in 1979 making the policy pointless and unnecessary. “The claim by the Chinese officials that the one child policy has helped avert over 400 million births simply cannot be substantiated by
With more than 1.3 billion people, China has to think about a solution and find ways to deal with its population explosion. In order to have control over population, in 1970, a policy named China’s One Child Policy was introduced. Mingliang argues that, “China, through the one-child policy, has instituted the most aggressive, comprehensive population policy in the world” (1). This policy limits all families in the Republic of China to have only one child, regardless of the sex: however, within this policy there are some exceptions. It is possible to have two children only if the first child is born with a disability, if parents work in a high risk job, if the couple lives in villages, or if the family is a non- Han, otherwise you are
There has been a long history of China’s one child policy, since it was first introduces in 1979 by a Chinese Leader Deng Xiaoping (Rosenberg n.p). The law was meant to be temporary and used to control the population; however it is still in use today (Rosenberg n.p). When the policy was first enforced, it only
Due to the one-child policy there are many serious human rights infractions. Since the policy has been in effect, there have been more than 400 million prevented births ("China:
In 1980 the Chinese government became intently terrified of the current population of their country. China housed over 950 million citizens and growing. To stop the increasing rates of fertility the government created a proposal to keep citizenry rates down. The one-child policy stated that every household of china could only give birth to one child. The conspiracy of the policy has said to have had positive and negative out views of the only child. In final analysis the making of the one-child policy left China prosperous in educational value, conserving land as well as pollution and limiting the overdevelopment of citizenry.
China’s one-child policy made it illegal for most Chinese couples to have more than one child. It was the culmination of the government’s long struggle to control population growth. The policy was enforced mainly through financial incentives and punishments, but in rural areas brutal enforcement techniques like non-consensual sterilization and abortion were sometimes used. While the policy did reduce the population, it also caused problems such as an unbalanced male-female sex ratio and “4:2:1 families.” The one-child policy shows that women in Communist China remained in a position of social and political inferiority.
The purpose was to limit the great majority of family units in the country to only having one child per family. China began promoting birth control and family planning with the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949. By the time that this policy was stating China had almost reached its one-billion mark. First born children were often favored to be a boy. This is because the son would inherit the land and family name when the father died. This resulted in the rise of abortions for female fetuses. Efforts were made to families with a handicapped first born child. The government was allowing those families to have more than one child. Also families that had a girl for a first born were allowed to have another child. If the parents were both didn’t have siblings they were also allowed to have more than one child. Late into 2015, the Chinese government decided to put raise the one child policy to two children per family that took effect in
This policy does not only limit the number of children a family can bear; it has also caused gender imbalance. In addition, it places pressure on women as families believe in passing down their family name down generations. They were also subjected to forced abortion if it appears to be a baby girl, and are blamed if they were to give birth to a baby girl. This difference in treatment took a turn for the worst after 1986, when ultrasound tests and abortion became easier to come by. Not only has the policy stole the freedom of women’s rights to make decisions, it had also led to the increase of female infanticide
With the One Child Policy, families were either forced to put their children up for adoption or were forced to have an abortion. Sometimes, people even put their children up for adoption because of their gender. “In the beginning when the policy came around in 1980, at that time they did not have scanning machines that could determine the gender of the fetus at an early stage, so people who delivered girls, for example, and wanted to keep their quota for that one boy — because if you used up your quota for a girl and then you gave birth to another girl and you would lose that — so people would either abandon their daughters or there would be infanticide, or they would give them away…”(NPR). The Chinese thought that having sons was the way
Violation of the One Child Policy results in fines, termination of employment, and refusal of governmental funding and loans. Fact. The One Child Policy results in abortion, neglect, abandonment and even infanticide. Fact. The One Child Policy allows a couple to have a second child…if their first is born with birth defects, or is born a girl.
One child policy is the official plan to control the population of country. The law restricts Urban couples to have only one child. If the pregnancy results in twins then the couples are permitted in having two children’s. The strict administration law of the only pertains to couples living
One Child Policy is indeed such an effective way to reduce the country’s population although it still has its pros and cons (some say it led to an abortion). This policy also seems complicated. At first, or for starters if the mother gave birth to a baby girl, they are (the parents) allowed to have another child and makes sure that it’s a boy. Also this policy
Equality; the state of being equal, especially in terms of status, rights, and opportunities. This seems like a given when one reflects upon the standards and statuses both men and women have achieved, but gender equality is still a huge issue, even from birth. Millions of children have been deemed missing due to sex-selective abortion, and these age old practices have huge consequences for society. From economy to religion, sons are preferred in a variety of countries, such as India and America. There are many similarities and differences regarding gender preference in India and America, especially concerning why one sex is preferred over the other, the steps each country has taken to prevent gender preference, and the impact gender preference has on society.