Abandoned children in China: the son-preference culture and the gender-differentiated impacts of the one-child policy

China has experienced an upsurge in child abandonment since the late 1970s in parallel with its one-child policy (OCP) and market reforms. Due to the scarcity of individual-level data, the literature focuses on informal adoption and child trafficking. This study first demonstrates the spatial-tempor...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Humanities & social sciences communications 2023-12, Vol.10 (1), p.532-10, Article 532
Main Authors: Yang, Mei, Xia, Xinming, Zhou, Yi
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Abortion
Children & youth
Data mining
Families & family life
Fertility
Fetuses
Gender
Internet
Kidnapping
Parents & parenting
Per capita
Population
Preferences
Self report
Sex discrimination
Socioeconomic factors
Tax increases
Tax rates
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Summary:China has experienced an upsurge in child abandonment since the late 1970s in parallel with its one-child policy (OCP) and market reforms. Due to the scarcity of individual-level data, the literature focuses on informal adoption and child trafficking. This study first demonstrates the spatial-temporal trends of child abandonment across over 100,000 self-reported cases spanning 40 years in China collected from an internet platform. We then examine how the OCP and the long-established clan culture influence the incidence of child abandonment at the provincial level. We further compare whether the influences vary across genders. The results indicate that a tougher OCP penalty increases child abandonment, particularly the abandonment of girls. The influence of the OCP on girl abandonment is weaker in provinces with a strong clan culture, where sex ratios at birth are more unbalanced due to an increased incidence of gender-selective abortions.
ISSN:2662-9992
2662-9992
DOI:10.1057/s41599-023-02015-z