CityReads│How the Missing Women in China Are Missing?

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How the Missing Women in China Are Missing?

Between 1990 and 2010, unreported female births explain 73 per cent of the missing girls in China.

Shi, Y. and Kennedy, J.J. 2016. Delayed Registration and Identifying the “Missing Girls” in China, The China Quarterly, , pp. 1–21. doi: 10.1017/S0305741016001132.

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Picture source: http://www.itsagirlmovie.com/

Who Are the Missing Women?

In his piece, More Than 100 Million Women Missing at the New York Review of Books on December 20, 1990, Amartya Sen first coined the term “missing women”.  He estimated the number of “missing women” in a country by calculating the number of extra women who would have been if these countries had the same ratio of women to men as obtain in areas of the world in which they receive similar care.  In China alone this amounts to 50 million “missing women,” taking 105 as the benchmark ratio. When that number is added to those in South Asia, West Asia, and North Africa, a great many more than 100 million women are “missing.” These numbers tell us, quietly, a terrible story of inequality and neglect leading to the excess mortality of women.

The sex ratio at birth (SRB) became increasingly skewed in China after the introduction of the single-child policy in 1979. The SRB is the number of males born for every 100 females: in 1982, it was 108; in 1990 it was 112; in 2000 it had grown to 117; and by 2010 it had reached 118. This is an extremely high SRB compared to the global average of 105, and the gap between 105 and 118 suggests significantly fewer females in the population.

To be noted, it is not the one-child policy that causes the missing women in China. There have always been missing women throughout Chinese history. Certainly, infanticide and abandonment of female children were both prevalent before 1950. In the late nineteenth century, a missionary questioned 40 women aged fifty or above. Together they had given birth to 183 sons and 175 daughters, but while 126 of the sons survived to age ten only 53 of the daughters did so. The women admitted to killing 78 of their female children. Female infanticide, mainly driven by a strong preference for sons due to Chinese patriarchal intuitions, became more prevalent when resources such as food and money were limited, as a means of making sure that boys would receive relatively more resources and thus have better chances of survival.

The percentage of missing Chinese women varies greatly over the twentieth century. Before 1949, the overall percentage of missing women was relatively high (generally above 6 percent). In the 1900s, the percentage remained relatively stable, until around 1910, that is, at the end of Qing Empire and the Republican Revolution, when the percentage rose to a local peak of around 11 percent, after which it declined until 1920.Thereafter the percentage of missing women generally tended to rise until the late 1930s, that is, at the beginning of the war against the Japanese, it reached its highest value for the twentieth century of around 14 percent, and then began to steadily decline.

After 1949, although the percentage of missing women fluctuated, it remained generally below 4 percent until the late 1970s. Between 1950 and 1980, there are two local peaks on the graph: one is during the Great Famine in the late 1950s when around 5 percent of women are estimated to have been missing and the other is during the Cultural Revolution in the mid-1960s when approximately 3 percent of women were missing.

Since the early 1980s, with the implementation of the economic reform and strict birth control program, the percentage of missing women has been continuously increasing, although the peak value in 2000 is, at just over 7 percent, still much lower than the maximum for the twentieth century (for more details, please refer to CityReads │ Where Have the Women Gone)

But the causes of missing women in China vary in the different periods. A recent paper published on The China Quarterly, Delayed Registration and Identifying the “Missing Girls” in China, estimated the relative roles of the three main explanations: sex-selective abortion, infanticide and delayed or late registration. The authors argue that the combination of late registration and unreported births may point to a larger proportion of“missing women”in China.

Three explanations of the missing women: sex-selective abortion, infanticide and delayed registration

How do we understand the missing women in China? There are two sets of ‘missing women’: those who go missing before birth and also those who are ‘lost’ after birth.  The first set are mainly the result of sex-selective induced abortion, which produces a high sex ratio at birth, while the second set arise from infanticide and the abandonment of female children as well as from the biased treatment of girls’ illnesses leading to excess female infant and child mortality.

Missing women can also be differentiated between ‘nominally’ and ‘truly’ missing women. ‘Truly’ missing refers to females who have disappeared both before and after birth for the reasons just listed. The ‘nominally’ missing includes not only the truly missing but also those who are living but whose births were not registered. The latter are ‘falsely missing’ from the statistics.

Thus, there are three explanations about the missing women: sex-selective abortion, infanticide and delayed registration.

Sex-selective Abortion

The use of ultrasound to determine the gender of a fetus was widely reported on in rural China throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. China produced its first B-scan machine in 1979, and by 1987, there were an estimated 13,000 ultrasound units in China. Scholars suggest that access to this technology has a significant influence on the SRB. They found that counties without ultrasound technology have an average SRB of 107, as opposed to 109 for counties that have the available technology. Local access to ultrasound technology explains about 40 to 50 percent of the skewed SRBs. It is estimated that the B-scan accounts for 15 to 30 million missing females.

In 1986, the National Commission for Family Planning and the Ministry of Health officially prohibited the use of ultrasound technology for prenatal diagnosis except in cases where the health of the mother or fetus was in danger. There were also significant penalties for doctors, hospitals and clinics caught violating this ban. However, the regulation was unevenly enforced and villagers found ways to access illegal ultrasounds. Actually, the precise role of sex selective abortion in the sex imbalance has been unclear, not least because the practice is illegal in China and obtaining reliable figures is difficult.

Infanticide and early infant death

National and provincial case study evidence points to higher female infant mortality rates. Some scholars suggest that millions of females die within their first year. In the 1980s and 1990s, infant females were two to three times more likely to die than males. Indeed, data from the 2000 China population census show the death rates for infants under the age of one to be 9 per 1,000 for males and 11 for females in urban areas, but 28 per 1,000 for males and 41 for females in rural areas.

Delayed registration

The SRB is a measure of formally registered infants and does not take into account children who are registered several months after birth.  According to Article 7 of the “Regulations concerning the household registration of the People’s Republic of China (PRC),” newborn children in the countryside must be formally registered within 30 days of birth. Families that fail to do so can face stiff fines. However, the registration policy is unevenly implemented and rural children can be officially registered at six or nine months of age. Late or delayed registration is defined as children who are formally registered after they turn one. These children should appear in older cohorts.

Cai and Lavely compare cohorts in the 1990 and 2000 census data and find that a number of males and females who are missing from the 1990 census appear in the 2000 census. The difference is between the SRB and the sex ratio of older cohorts. They compare estimates of a normal SRB with the actual number of girls in the 2000 census, and suggest that one-third of the missing girls are hidden within the population at the time of the census count. Despite the increase in the number of males and females between 1990 and 2000 owing to late registration, the sex ratio for the 10-year-old cohorts in 2000 remains high.

Poor quality data and record keeping may not be the only reason for this discrepancy between the SRB and older cohorts. Rather, a key factor is villagers’ motives and actions to hide these girls from the census takers.  Indeed, since the late 1980s, villagers have had stronger motives for hiding young girls, as the girls can contribute to household income by picking up the slack in farming when the men leave the village for work. In addition, it is not uncommon for daughters to care for their own elderly parents. 

Local officials are reprimanded for excess or out-of-plan births. As a result, it is in their interest to underreport these births to the higher authorities. Indeed, much of the underreporting may be owing to families and local officials attempting to hide girls. We argue that a large proportion of the missing girls may be the result of a massive uncoordinated cover up to hide policy infringements.

Sex-selective abortion, infanticide and delayed registration, which accounts more?

Table 1 shows the reported death rates for rural births in 1990, 2000 and 2010. Between 1990 and 2000, there is a dramatic rise in rural female infant deaths, from 29 to 41 per 1,000, with only a slight rise in male infant mortality. However, we also observe a significant decrease in the female (as well as overall) infant mortality rate for the rural population after 2000. In order to take into account underreporting of female infant deaths, we use the highest reported female infant death rate for the rural population, at 41 per 1,000, and estimate the number of female deaths if this rate was on a parity with the male death rate at 28 per 1,000. The difference is about 50,000 female infant deaths. Thus, female infant deaths may only account for a small proportion of the missing girls.

Table 1 1990, 2000 and 2010 Census Death Rates per 1,000 for the Rural Population

Table 2 compares estimates of missing girls from three separate age groups for the census years 1990, 2000 and 2010. The sex ratio for 10-year-olds in 2000 is similar to the SRB in 1990 at 111. However, the sex ratio drops to 103 for 20-year-olds in 2010, with an additional 4.8 million undercounted births (i.e. late registration) and over 900,000 more females than males. The pattern and numbers are the same when we examine the different age groups, such as aged two years in 1990 and aged 22 years in 2010, with additional females ranging from 550,000 to 950,000 for each cohort. Moreover, life expectancy for males and females over the age of ten has been increasing during the 1980s and 1990s. If we consider a lower bound conservative estimate of 550,000 undercounted or additional females per year from 1990 to 2010, then there are possibly 11 million more females (or 16.5 million since 1980).

Table 2 Comparing Cohorts’ Demographic Differences and Estimates of Missing Girls From Separate Census Years (1990, 2000 and 2010)

To sum up, we have a rough estimate of about 15 million missing girls from 1990 to 2010.  About 11 million additional, unreported female births explain 73 per cent of the missing girls. With an upper bound estimate of one million female infant deaths for this time period, female infant deaths may account for 7 per cent of the missing girls. Finally, given the estimates, we believe that sex-selective abortion accounts for about 20 per cent of the missing females. Unlike adoption and reported death rates, it is more challenging to quantify the actual number of illegal abortions.

Conclusion

In rural China, unregistered girls were not unusual cases but rather a more widespread phenomenon. The census data show a dramatic increase in reported females after the age of ten, and in particular after the age of 15. This suggests a large number of young women are not being officially registered until their teens. There are several reasons behind the late registration of an infant or teenage girl. First, some rural families may put off formally registering a girl until they have a son. This is because, since the mid-1980s, villagers can legally have a second child if the first is a girl. However, if the family’s second child is a girl, then parents may decide not to register the second daughter until after a son is born, and then formally register the son as the “second” child.

Second, parents who have an out-of-plan birth must pay a hefty fine and may want to delay payment until a later date. Moreover, if they have an out-of-plan son and daughter, they may decide to pay the fine for the son and register him first.

A third reason behind late registration is the distinction between elementary and junior high school enrolment in rural areas.

The final incentive for registration is marriage. In order to apply for a marriage certificate, couples must have proper hukou. The most dramatic increase in female late registration is between the age of 20 and 24 years old. 

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