Discrimination Against Girls in Early Childhood

Abstract

The male surplus in China is highest in the young population, and this has been the case for at least the past half-century. The 1953 census revealed a deficit of girls among children aged under 15, with a sex ratio of 111.4 boys for every 100 girls. Not long after that date, however, there was a gradual gender rebalancing among children, as living standards and the status of women began to improve in the 1950s, at a time when there were no restrictions on family size. Although the proportion of boys remained higher than the levels usually observed, the sex ratio of the child population decreased considerably by the 1960s, falling to 107.6 boys per 100 girls in 1964 and to 106.4 in the 1982 census (NBS 1988). China’s child population entered a new phase of masculinization in the next inter-census period (1982–1990), by the end of which the sex ratio of children under 15 had risen to 108.5. It increased even further in the recent period, to 113.6 boys per 100 girls in 2000 (PCO 2002) and 118.3 in 2010 (PCO 2012).