Poston, Dudley, Eugenia Conde, and Bethany DeSalvo. “China’s Unbalanced Sex Ratio at Birth, Millions of Excess Bachelors and
Societal Implications.” Vulnerable Children and Youth Studies 6 (1991): 314–320.
The authors provide their own estimates of the number of excess men in China in recent years, which they claim may be as many as 40
million. They also warn that such large numbers of unmarriageable men may foster several negative consequences, such as the increasing
spread of sexually transmitted diseases and a rising national tendency for aggressive or even militaristic behavior. Other sources in this
section suggest that their numerical estimate is too high, and that the dire implications drawn are questionable.
Shi Yaojiang, and John James Kennedy. “Delayed Registration and Identifying the ‘Missing Girls’ in China.” The China Quarterly
228 (2016): 1018–1038.
The authors, relying both on rural fieldwork and their examination of Chinese census data, claim that estimates by others of the number of
missing girls are inflated, and that probably more than 70 percent are living but hidden daughters. A subsequent issue The China Quarterly
published a critique by Yong Cai of this article (Yong Cai, “Missing Girls or Hidden Girls? A Comment on Shi and Kennedy's ‘Delayed
Registration and Identifying the “Missing Girls” in China,’” The China Quarterly 231 [2017]: 797–803, Cai contended that Shi and Kennedy’s
analysis of hidden girls was deeply flawed and that in recent years the proportion of hidden girls remains a minority of the missing girl
totals, not a majority. Shi and Kennedy responded in the same issue of the journal (Shi Yaojiang and John James Kennedy, “Missing Girls,
Indirect Measures and Critical Assumptions: A Response to Yong Cai's Comments,” The China Quarterly 231 [2017]: 804–810).
Looming Demographic Challenges: Rapid Population Aging and Young Worker Shortages
Even as whether to impose a one-child birth limit was being debated in the late 1970s and then as the one-child campaign was being
launched nationally in 1980, some Chinese demographers raised strong objections, particularly pointing to the future difficulties that would
be caused by accelerated aging of the population and the difficult eldercare burdens that would fall on Chinese singletons. Champions of
the one-child policy acknowledged these criticisms, but brushed them aside as problems that could be dealt with in the future. But the
critics did not go away, and in the years from about 2000 onward, as evidence of the rapid aging of China and also the looming shrinking of
the pool of new workers mounted, criticisms of the one-child policy revived and became more pronounced and visible, eventually helping to
pressure the CCP to finally end the one-child limit after thirty-five years. The works listed in this section are a few of the English-language
research reports that focus on the demographic distortions produced by the one-child limit (distortions that include the skewed sex ratios
that were the focus of the previous section Distortion of Sex Ratios at Birth: Missing Girls and “Bare Sticks”). Yan 2003 presents a reminder
that other trends were already threatening the tradition of relying on grown children for eldercare in rural China prior to the maturation of
children born in the one-child era. Chen and Fan 2018 reports that for those born during the 1970s, the mandatory birth limits of the “later,
longer, fewer” campaign have translated into higher rates of emotional distress of the elderly today in localities where that campaign was
enforced most strictly. Zimmer and Kwong 2003 and Poston and Duan 2000 are both concerned with making projections of the future
familial support problems that China’s growing elderly population can expect to face. Zhang 2005 describes how parents in one rural locale
are seeking strategies to enable them to survive even if they do not have a grown son to support them in old age. Pang, et al. 2004
presents survey data showing that increasingly rural parents feel they have to keep working and earning as long as they are able, given the
unpredictability of support from grown children. Wang 2011 takes a wider view, focusing not only on problems of supporting the rapidly
growing proportion of China’s population who are elderly, but also the mounting challenges China is now facing as the number of new
workers has begun to decline. Wang and Cai 2019 projects the crippling financial burden of welfare expenditures on the government in the
future due to rapid population aging. Davis 2016 takes a still broader focus than Wang 2011, examining not only the problems associated
with the rapid aging of the population and the decline in young workers, but also the marriage difficulties faced by millions of excess males,
rising divorce rates, and rapid urbanization of the population.
Chen Yi, and Hanming Fan. “How Family Planning Policies Reshape the Life of the Chinese Elderly” VOX, 2 October 2018.
Economists Chen and Fan use data on variations in enforcement of the mandatory birth limits of the “later, longer, fewer” campaign during
the 1970s to examine the impact on the physical and mental health of Chinese born during those years. They conclude that, while the vigor
of birth limit enforcement in the 1970s is not associated with variations in physical health today, those most exposed to that campaign do
report more symptoms of emotional distress currently.