Suicide In China Essay
China - Two researchers say comprehensive new data shows that traditional family patterns in China, combined with tough population-control measures, have resulted in ``female infanticide on a grand scale'' -- close to 800,000 baby girls abandoned or killed in a single region between 1971-80 alone.
G. William Skinner, an anthropologist and China specialist at the University of California-Davis, and Chinese researcher Yuan Jianhua based their conclusions on an analysis of 1990 Chinese census data. They presented their findings at the Association for Asian Studies' annual meeting last weekend in San Diego.
While the phenomenon of disappearing girls isn't new, the paper by Yuan and Skinner is the first to show how location and family composition …show more content…
help determine infants' fate: The more rural a baby girl's surroundings, and the more sisters she had at birth, the higher her chances of not surviving.
The researchers say most of the girls were abandoned or killed at birth.
Chinese officials have long maintained that missing girls are adopted or raised on the sly, but Skinner said the data does not allow for concealment.
Skinner and Yuan, who works for a semiofficial agency in Beijing that does population projections for the Chinese government, focused on a 1 percent census sample of China's lower Yangtze region. Located around the central metropolis of Shanghai, the area ranges from crowded coastal cities to surrounding rural communities, and had a population of 140 million in 1990.
Their research found that the culturally ``minimal acceptable'' Chinese family consisted of two boys and a girl, given China's patrilineal heritage. Daughters are important as well for household duties, marriage into a higher-status family, and the source of sons-in-law when there are no male heirs.
China began trying to control its massive population growth in 1970 and introduced a one-child-per-family policy in 1980 -- an approach that ran into huge resistance and was "relaxed" after 1986. From 1971 to 1980, Skinner and Yuan found that 808,300 baby girls were missing, or about 8 percent of all girls born in the lower Yangtze region during the decade. About 81,800 boys, or 4.7 percent of the total, are missing,
too.
But Skinner and Yuan conclude that while most of the boys were adopted or ``transferred'' to other families, most of the girls were killed shortly after birth. Their research was aided by the fact that the Chinese census collects a birth history from every woman under the age of 65.
The data paints a stark picture. For example, 44.6 percent of all girls who were the sixth-born child in lower Yangtze families between 1971-80 are ``missing,'' the researchers said. At the same time, 45.4 percent of all girls born into families with four daughters are missing.
The disappearance of girls has continued over time. All Yangtze-region couples with two daughters reported more than twice as many male as female births in 1989-90 when it came to baby No. 3. That's more than double the natural ratio of 104-106 baby boys born for every 100 baby girls. For couples with two daughters, the ratio shot up to 232 baby boys per 100 baby girls in 1989-90.
``We'd expect it to be 104, so more than half of those girls have been disposed of,'' Skinner said in an interview. Many girls were abandoned at birth, he said, but the traditional method of infanticide is drowning.
``The moral of the story is that the Chinese birth-planning program has caused a major upsurge of infanticide,'' Skinner said. ``There's been terrible resistance along the way.''
Statistics since 1990 show that China's male-female imbalance is persisting, and there have been reports in both the Chinese and the Western press about the rise of targeted abortions of female fetuses after their sex is detected by ultrasound. In 1997, a University of Washington demographer cited statistics from a 1995 Chinese census sampling. That data reportedly showed that among 3-year-olds, there were 119 boys per 100 girls; among 2-year-olds, 121 boys; and among children less than a year old, 116 boys.
G. William Skinner, an anthropologist and China specialist at the University of California-Davis, and Chinese researcher Yuan Jianhua based their conclusions on an analysis of 1990 Chinese census data. They presented their findings at the Association for Asian Studies' annual meeting last weekend in San Diego.
While the phenomenon of disappearing girls isn't new, the paper by Yuan and Skinner is the first to show how location and family composition …show more content…
help determine infants' fate: The more rural a baby girl's surroundings, and the more sisters she had at birth, the higher her chances of not surviving.
The researchers say most of the girls were abandoned or killed at birth.
Chinese officials have long maintained that missing girls are adopted or raised on the sly, but Skinner said the data does not allow for concealment.
Skinner and Yuan, who works for a semiofficial agency in Beijing that does population projections for the Chinese government, focused on a 1 percent census sample of China's lower Yangtze region. Located around the central metropolis of Shanghai, the area ranges from crowded coastal cities to surrounding rural communities, and had a population of 140 million in 1990.
Their research found that the culturally ``minimal acceptable'' Chinese family consisted of two boys and a girl, given China's patrilineal heritage. Daughters are important as well for household duties, marriage into a higher-status family, and the source of sons-in-law when there are no male heirs.
China began trying to control its massive population growth in 1970 and introduced a one-child-per-family policy in 1980 -- an approach that ran into huge resistance and was "relaxed" after 1986. From 1971 to 1980, Skinner and Yuan found that 808,300 baby girls were missing, or about 8 percent of all girls born in the lower Yangtze region during the decade. About 81,800 boys, or 4.7 percent of the total, are missing,
too.
But Skinner and Yuan conclude that while most of the boys were adopted or ``transferred'' to other families, most of the girls were killed shortly after birth. Their research was aided by the fact that the Chinese census collects a birth history from every woman under the age of 65.
The data paints a stark picture. For example, 44.6 percent of all girls who were the sixth-born child in lower Yangtze families between 1971-80 are ``missing,'' the researchers said. At the same time, 45.4 percent of all girls born into families with four daughters are missing.
The disappearance of girls has continued over time. All Yangtze-region couples with two daughters reported more than twice as many male as female births in 1989-90 when it came to baby No. 3. That's more than double the natural ratio of 104-106 baby boys born for every 100 baby girls. For couples with two daughters, the ratio shot up to 232 baby boys per 100 baby girls in 1989-90.
``We'd expect it to be 104, so more than half of those girls have been disposed of,'' Skinner said in an interview. Many girls were abandoned at birth, he said, but the traditional method of infanticide is drowning.
``The moral of the story is that the Chinese birth-planning program has caused a major upsurge of infanticide,'' Skinner said. ``There's been terrible resistance along the way.''
Statistics since 1990 show that China's male-female imbalance is persisting, and there have been reports in both the Chinese and the Western press about the rise of targeted abortions of female fetuses after their sex is detected by ultrasound. In 1997, a University of Washington demographer cited statistics from a 1995 Chinese census sampling. That data reportedly showed that among 3-year-olds, there were 119 boys per 100 girls; among 2-year-olds, 121 boys; and among children less than a year old, 116 boys.