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01.05.2011

Estimating a Dynamic Model of Sex Selection in China

verfasst von: Avraham Ebenstein

Erschienen in: Demography | Ausgabe 2/2011

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Abstract

High ratios of males to females in China, which have historically concerned researchers (Sen 1990), have increased in the wake of China’s one-child policy, which began in 1979. Chinese policymakers are currently attempting to correct the imbalance in the sex ratio through initiatives that provide financial compensation to parents with daughters. Other scholars have advocated a relaxation of the one-child policy to allow more parents to have a son without engaging in sex selection. In this article, I present a model of fertility choice when parents have access to a sex-selection technology and face a mandated fertility limit. By exploiting variation in fines levied in China for unsanctioned births, I estimate the relative price of a son and daughter for mothers observed in China’s census data (1982–2000). I find that a couple’s first son is worth 1.42 years of income more than a first daughter, and the premium is highest among less-educated mothers and families engaged in agriculture. Simulations indicate that a subsidy of 1 year of income to families without a son would reduce the number of “missing girls” by 67% but impose an annual cost of 1.8% of Chinese gross domestic product (GDP). Alternatively, a three-child policy would reduce the number of “missing girls” by 56% but increase the fertility rate by 35%.

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One notable exception is Kim (2005), who examined the predicted effect on the sex ratio and overall fertility in response to the introduction of ultrasound technology.

China’s Care for Girls campaign began in 2000 in 24 counties and subsidizes parents who have only daughters. Preliminary reports indicate the programs have lowered the sex ratio at birth (Embassy of the People’s Republic of China 2006).

See D’Souza and Chen (1980) for an early paper on gender bias and sex ratios, examining excess female mortality in rural Bangladesh.

Recent work that has exploited the one-child policy as a natural experiment that induced a reduction in fertility include Qian (2009) and Edlund et al. (2008). I describe how the fines are calculated in detail in Online Resource 1. I also examine whether changes in fertility enforcement are correlated with changes in fertility tastes that would bias the coefficients.

Several recent empirical analyses should be noted. Abrevaya (2009) found evidence of sex-selective abortion in United States natality data among immigrants from China and India. Lin et al. (2008) found evidence that Taiwan’s sex ratio at birth increased in the wake of the legalization of abortion. In recent work, Liu (2009) examined the impact of China’s one-child policy on per-child investment levels and child outcomes by comparing areas of weaker and tighter fertility controls.

Chu (2001) in field work found that 7% of male fetuses at higher birth parities are aborted following ultrasound. The other known cause for low sex ratios following sons is the adoption of unwanted girls by Chinese families with no daughters (Johansson and Nygren 1991).

Fertility surveys suggest that mothers in China prefer “two or more (surviving children), and at least one surviving son” (Wang 1996). The preference for a daughter among parents who already have sons is partly driven by the expectation that daughters help more with family chores (Chu 2001).

As one anonymous reviewer noted, sex selection in favor of daughters is much less common, and the most pronounced pattern of fertility is sex selection in favor of sons. Simpler models of fertility in China can be derived by focusing on the premium to having a first son. I proceed with the expanded version in this article, which treats the decisions symmetrically.

See the appendix for a more complete description of the stochastic assumptions underlying the model and the calculation of the likelihood function.

For parents who are extremely likely to abort a female conception if they reach the final round, the decision to have another child can be simplified by plugging in θ_i – A _i for E(V ³) in Eq. 6. The decision to abort a female conception at the first parity can be expressed as θ_1i –A _i – γ_1i – (θ_i –F – .49A _i) or F – .51A _i – γ_1i. Intuitively, if the fine exceeds 51% of the cost of sex selection and the value of a first daughter, these parents are better served by avoiding the fine and aborting first-parity female conceptions until a son is born because the only benefit to abstaining from sex selection at the first parity is a 51% chance of avoiding sex selection at the second parity, and the value of a first daughter.

Note that this is also consistent with the patterns in the sex ratio at birth in China during the fertility crackdown of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The birth-planning campaign was held after the diffusion of ultrasound in rural China, and the reduction in village fertility was accompanied by a rising sex ratio at birth (Greenhalgh and Winckler 2005).

In Taiwan’s KAP survey (2003), desired children and sex preference are negatively correlated with a mother’s education. The value of sons and daughters may also be different for those engaged in farming. For example, Qian (2008) found evidence that local sex ratios are higher in areas where the crops planted require more male labor.

An alternative to this specification would be to allow parents to be selected from a mixture distribution, in which some share of parents never abort. I have explored estimating the model in this manner, and the estimation procedure indicates that roughly 52% of parents would practice sex selection, as estimated by MLE. I proceed with the simpler version of sex selection costs because the results are more stable, but the parameter estimates are reasonably close using either specification. The results are available from the author upon request.

The prefecture variable is available only in the 2000 census, so the male fraction of births is proxied by the male fraction of adults who report living in the same prefecture five years earlier.

A legitimate concern may be that parents under higher urban fine regimes would have fewer children than those in rural areas, even in the absence of the policy. Fertility surveys still indicate that most parents would prefer to have at least two children (Zhang et al. 2006), and so the fertility limit (and therefore the fine) is a binding constraint for most parents.

Note that the fine measure should be thought of as a proxy for all financial pressures on parents to minimize “out-of-plan” births. I can impute only the financial punishment, and other components of the total punishment and reward structure have to go unmeasured. It is known, however, that the financial fines are a major component, outweighing (for example) rewards. This is documented in the China Health and Nutrition Survey (1993) in which the median reward is 60 yuan, and the median fine is 2,800 yuan. The nonfinancial penalties are informal and exercised optionally, and are assumed random in the data. This article’s results should be interpreted up to a scale in which the imputed fines presented here represent the full sum of financial punishment meted out for excess fertility.

Results comparing the fertility patterns among women in the census and in the matched sample are available upon request. The patterns are broadly similar between the restricted sample and the overall sample.

Very few women in China during the years of the One Child Policy give birth past age 35 (Ding and Hesketh 2006).

For 2000, the sex ratio of those dropped from the sample is 1.16, and the sex ratio of those remaining in the sample is 1.18, suggesting that this decision is not critical. As in the previous section, the results are robust to the inclusion or exclusion of these mothers. Results are available upon request.

The results are robust to the inclusion or exclusion of the roughly 11% of the 2000 sample who switched hukou. Note that migration is available only in the 2000 sample.

Banister and Hill (2004) created life tables for this period by examining repeated samples of China’s census data and mortality surveys. This analysis should be interpreted subject to the caveat that I have appropriately adjusted the sex ratio of living children using these life tables to estimate the sex ratio of births.

In 2005, the United States naturalized nearly 8,000 Chinese adopted children, and more than 95% of the children were female. The Chinese government reported a total of 60,000 adopted births sent to foreign countries between 1992 and 2006 (Goodman 2006).

Greenhalgh et al. (1994) cited one rural village in which villagers refer to a second son as fudan zhong, or a “heavy burden,” because a second son requires a new house at the time of his marriage, which may cost up to 10 years of annual income.

This measure is imputed from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (1989), using information on the average distance in kilometers from a clinic imputed to the census with the parent’s urban status and education. Those in urban areas with more education are assigned a shorter distance to the nearest clinic.

I also perform this calculation where one-half of the sample is used for estimation of the parameters, and the other half is used for comparing actual and simulated outcomes. Results are available from the author upon request.

The Care for Girls campaign chose 24 counties of China with extremely high sex ratios, and provided incentives to reduce the female deficit, including free public education for daughters. The program explicitly subsidizes parents with daughters, whereas I simulate parents having a lower value to sons. These are slightly different because a simulation in which I increased the value of daughters could generate the perverse result that parents are subsidized for unauthorized births. Note, however, that because the Care for Girls campaign is instituted in counties with strict fertility limits, it is unlikely that births born in violation of the policy would be subject to the subsidies, and thus the demographic effect of the subsidy that I simulate would have similar empirical properties.

An alternative proposal that has been explored in rural areas is the direct subsidy of those who undergo sterilization for those with two daughters and no sons. Although I would like to compare my results with those found in areas with this policy, the data are, unfortunately, unavailable.

Fertility surveys in Taiwan indicate that higher-educated women are less likely to report having a gender preference for births (Taiwan’s KAP Survey 2003).

In China, urban areas have stricter fertility limits, and mothers also have, on average, more education.

Note that the Trivers and Willard hypothesis (1973) also predicted a positive correlation between status and education if a species can vary the male fraction of births in response to anticipated success in mating (because males have more variable mating outcomes). This hypothesis is not thought to apply among human populations in a matter that would affect the male fraction of births by more than a few percentage points (Norberg 2004).

The shock associated with current outcomes is assumed to have variance λ, which is known as the scale parameter because it affects only the levels of coefficients and not the relative size of each. λ is set equal to unity, which implies the parameters are identified in the same units as the fines (i.e., years of income).

The claim that the difference in errors in each period is independent across periods requires that random factors affecting the attractiveness of options are uncorrelated with future or past shocks experienced by the individual.

See Train (2003) for a thorough treatment of the estimation of discrete choice models. In the calculation of the model, I assume the scale parameter τ is equal to 1, and so the scale of the coefficients is set to the level of fines. I assume that the location parameter γ is equal to 0 (zero).

The likelihood function for the three-child model comprises 14 outcomes and is available in Online Resource 2.

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Titel: Estimating a Dynamic Model of Sex Selection in China
verfasst von: Avraham Ebenstein
Publikationsdatum: 01.05.2011
Verlag: Springer US
Erschienen in: Demography / Ausgabe 2/2011
Print ISSN: 0070-3370
Elektronische ISSN: 1533-7790
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-011-0030-7

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