Restoring gender equilibrium in China
The real estate bubble is helping out:
Internet chat groups have sprang up where women exchange advice on how to conceive girls.
Rising property prices are driving the change, which is expected to be confirmed by China’s once-a-decade census that started on Monday, because Chinese families must traditionally buy a flat for a son before he can marry.
“My husband and I don’t earn much and I can’t imagine how we can buy a flat for a son,” says Zhang Aiqin of Pujiang in Zhejiang province.
“And it is not only a flat,” says Zhang Yun, a Shanxi province native who lives in Shanghai, alluding to the cost of educating and marrying off a boy. “Sons bring economic pressure ... [but] ‘a daughter is a warm jacket for a mother’ when she is old,” she says, quoting an ancient Chinese idiom to illustrate the fact that many urbanised Chinese think daughters are better caregivers.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on November 3, 2010 at 08:01 AM in Current Affairs, Economics | Permalink
Comments
Ancient idioms are great, because you can usually find ones that argue each side of an argument.
Posted by: John Thacker at Nov 3, 2010 8:15:56 AM
Wait, what created the gender imbalance in the first place? Oh, that's right, gender selection through abortion, not "advice on how to conceive" (which is all bunk and wouldn't restore equilibrium at all unless you get professional help.)
So, either the real-estate bubble *won't* restore equilibrium, or it will do so by reducing "because it's a girl" abortions and/or increasing "because it's a boy" abortions.
Anyway, there's still a few dozen million extra young men of marriageable-age (or soon-to-be), that this will not help in time.
Overall, still an inauspicious post.
Posted by: Indy at Nov 3, 2010 8:52:57 AM
I would be interested to see how wide-spread this is, as about 10 years ago, there was significant reporting on how many baby girls were discarded to orphanages as "maggots in the rice." The issue being that as adults they would live near and support their in-laws rather than their parents.
Posted by: BCN411 at Nov 3, 2010 9:17:03 AM
The other commenters have already correctly brought up the issue of sex-selective abortion. Is this another bogus trend or does this accurately reflect urban China now?
The Chinese have favored boys for traditional reasons and also, I believe, because men earn more money than women and parents expect their adult children to take care of them in old age. Sex selection has been a particularly acute problem in urban China because parents only get one shot with the one child policy.
If this is accurate, perhaps it reflects an expectation that China will have a welfare state in 40 to 50 years. Even with a real estate bubble, I would think buying a place for the kid would be a small price to pay in exchange for a safety net in old age.
Posted by: Ricardo at Nov 3, 2010 10:01:17 AM
Hunch from a limited set of anecdotes : sex selective abortion in India seems to be based on purely utilitarian grounds - the cost of daughter's marriage (popularity of dowry, a recent entrant to much of India, went up last century; plus marriages have become way more expensive, with more guests etc.), the fact that only the son was expected to work traditionally, and of course that the girl's income and services would go to in-laws.
But many Chinese I know seem to consider daughters as more useful to their parents, because women allegedly take family and hence their parents more seriously (though BCN411's comment above suggests a different picture on "usefulness to parents" - don't know which one applies more significantly). The reason for sex selective abortion in China seems not quite utilitarian, but that people perceive only male progeny as perpetuating "their lineage".
Once again the above are based on limited discussion and extrapolation, not sure about their correctness.
Posted by: Sandeep at Nov 3, 2010 10:10:17 AM
According to the CIA World Factbook, China has the second highest sex ratio at birth next to Curacao. The ratio is 1.14 boys to girls while the normal ratio in much of the world is about 1.05. I call bogus trend, maybe among the upper middle class and elite.
Posted by: Ricardo at Nov 3, 2010 10:11:53 AM
I heard similar things in Burma. I think traditional ways are changing
and it is much more likely that Daughters will spend time helping their families.
It is probably the sames in western countries?
Posted by: Steve at Nov 3, 2010 11:19:51 AM
1- Parents will stop favouring boys over girls when China moves away from being an economy of cheap labour. Service sector, management and many manufacturing jobs can be performed just as well by a woman. I'd be interested in seeing statistics comparing gender disequilibrium in the poorer, rural Provinces to that ratio in the urban, coastal provinces.
2- My girlfriend is from Fujian province and I've gotten the sense that in her middle school and her Chinese university that boys didn't noticeably out number girls. I'll ask her about it specifically, but this is just based on her friends on renren. As a girl she probably has friend more girls than boys. She moved to Canada to finish her business finance degree, which goes to my point that, at least for the wealthier parts of China, gender is irrelevant to success.
3- In an evolutionary psychology course I took I learned that causal, short term sexual encounters are more likely when women out number men. I wonder if Chinese modesty has been at all enhanced by the higher ratio of boys to girls. (more men then women favours long term mating strategies, which leads to less promiscuity etc.)
Posted by: Samuel at Nov 3, 2010 11:26:03 AM
"many urbanised Chinese think daughters are better caregivers"
So what? So do most urbanised Americans in my experience.
Posted by: vanya at Nov 3, 2010 11:34:07 AM
Not to worry. The ongoing Chinese census results will paint the picture that most of the criticisms and concerns over China's population composition and size, and the impact of such on China's growth and power going forward, aren't much to worry about at all. Have faith.
Posted by: BPO at Nov 3, 2010 11:54:31 AM
But in India, daughters bring pressure.Sometimes,parents have to constructnumber of houses equivalent to the number of daughters.Therefore, parents having govt jobs forced accept bribes from the public.Marriage expenditure of a huge one in terms of dowry, property, gold, textiles, consumer durables, vehicles,feast, auditorium fees(that too costly and prestigious in the town) etc.There is pre and post marriage expenditures.bandwagon, Veblen and Snob effects do their roles.
Posted by: GVV at Nov 3, 2010 12:16:50 PM
But in India, daughters bring pressure.Sometimes,parents have to constructnumber of houses equivalent to the number of daughters.Therefore, parents having govt jobs are forced to accept bribes from the public.Marriage expenditure is a huge one and is in terms of dowry, property, gold, textiles, consumer durables, vehicles,feast, auditorium fees(that too costly and prestigious in the town) etc.There is pre and post marriage expenditures.Bandwagon, Veblen and Snob effects do their roles.
Posted by: GVV at Nov 3, 2010 12:19:32 PM
When the girl/ spouse shortage is enough that boys are buying brides, and even agreeing to live with the bride's family (rather than husband), then the balance will be more addressed.
The ability of 40+ guys to buy(woo), and then copulate and reproduce with teen girls, means that it won't be so terribly hard for the successful Chinese guys to find mates, and for some kind of tolerable balance to be created.
At least, I hope this rather than a 30 mil. unmarried angry mob of women-less guys looking for glory.
Posted by: Tom Grey at Nov 3, 2010 2:28:45 PM
@Samuel: The gender imbalance is far greater in the rural areas as the younger women all go to the cities for the superior financial opportunities available to them.
Posted by: Sbard at Nov 3, 2010 7:11:13 PM
I expected the gender imbalance in China to self-correct. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan all have had a preference for boys at some point in their past that later shifted towards girls. The same thing is now happening in China.
The big question is India.
Posted by: kurt9 at Nov 4, 2010 2:06:53 PM
Well I think there are a lot of single Chinese males who would be happy about a more equal balance of the sexes.
Comments