0.6 Investment in human capital: education and health  (Page 16/16)

Many societies besides India and China exhibit significant son preferences. Vietnam, Brazil, Singapore, Taiwan, Balkan Nations in Central Europe. But son preference has much more skewed in China and until recently India (see Table 7-3).

When son preference is combined with low or falling fertility rates and the availability of ultrasound screening, of the incidence of abortion of female fetuses tends to be high.

Historical reason for son preference?

1. Need for males with strong upper body strength to do aggressive physical work and do battle.
2. In some places the high dowries families have to pay in a daughter’s marriage. (India).

The chinese one-child policy: a brief overview

Originally enforced by the Chinese politician Deng Xiaoping, the one-child policy has at its core belief a Malthusian mechanism, which posits that unchecked population growth forever dooms a society to poverty.

Prior to the introduction of this policy, population growth was in China was initially regarded as an economic advantage , a belief furthered by Mao Zedong who famously proclaimed in 1949, “Of all things in the world, people are the most precious” (Fitzpatrick). Under Mao, government policies denounced birth control and also banned imports of contraceptives. But continued population growth, aided by improved sanitation and medicine and accompanied by an overall economic conversion from agriculture to industry caused a rethink of Mao’s policy.

A new Slogan was adopted “Late, Long and Few.” Some initial success in this policy led to the current one-child policy. Li et al., 1993. Before 1997 it was often the case that for couples who broke the one child policy their houses were torn down. And as late as 2005 many women were made to undergo forced sterilization, sometimes by the use of force.

The one-child policy in its original version restricted most urban couples to have one child, rural couples to two: An extra child could incur fines up to 100,000 yuan or about $6,000 U.S. at the time, an amount in excess of per capita income in China. Since its implementation, the policy is reputed to have prevented perhaps 400 million births. Future implications of the policy include the rapid aging of society.

There was however some positive shorter-term changes from the one-child policy.

1. It fostered some financial and social independence of those Chinese women who as infants survived the ultrasound scan. Daughters with fewer siblings , especially in urban areas, are more likely to receive secondary and higher education, and therefore have the possibility, at least of greater financial independence.
2. The enforced family planning also freed some Chinese women from some rigid traditional duties of childbearing and childrearing.
3. In China, sons stayed in the family after marriage whereas daughters usually move to the homes of in-laws.

Question- Will the new leader Xi Yinping who took over in 2012 in China take a fresh look at the one-child policy and perhaps modify or end it?

Some unforeseen economic effects of interaction of falling fertility rates, son preference and Later marriage age

While we lack the space to cover all the possible economic effects of major demographic shifts now underway, there is one further demographic change happening that will have significant effects on population growth: Rising age of marriage (also happening in the U.S.). In Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan this is called “The Marriage Strike.”

Women are either not marrying, or more commonly, postponing the age of marriage and their first childbirth. (Consider the 2010 Hong Kong average age of childbearing: 31.4 years).

If we combine the effects of:

1. Falling fertility worldwide
2. Son preference in many nations
3. Rising age of first marriage

In more than eighty countries if present trends continue the result would be that women would increasingly not have enough daughters to replace them, unless fertility rates rise and unless son preference becomes less common.

Consider a perhaps extreme case: Hong Kong:

There, a cohort of 1000 women is now expected, given present fertility rates and son preference, to give birth to 547 daughters . If fertility rates and son preference stay consistent, then these 547 daughters would bear 299 daughters of their own, etc., etc.

Result - in just 25 generations, Hong Kong population would fall from 3.75 million today to just …………. One in 2798. Given Hong Kong’s fertility rate and average age of first marriage, the last woman to be born in Hong Kong would be in the year 2798 . And by the next millennium, there would be only one person in Germany, Italy, Japan Russia and Spain. China would have 1500 years left before reaching this extreme outcome.

However, it is not likely that such extreme outcomes will actually materialize. Reasons include:

• Fertility rates could move up to 2.2 or 2.3.
• Son preference could fall to such as to stabilize the ratio of male to female births at liob.
• The average age of marriage, may decrease slightly, or at least not increase.

This exercise depicts some of the startling things that would occur if present conditions are extrapolated into the long run.

The same could be done with mortality rates. What if a child born today has a life expectancy of 95 or 100? What will this mean for employment? Social Security system etc. etc.

In any case, the entire world has been experiencing very marked demographic change. When these are mixed with technological changes and economic changes it is a safe bet that the future will not much resemble the present.