Education and urbanization are shown to have been negatively correlated to marital fertility in both urban and rural China prior to the initiation of the substantial family planning programs. We maintain that early use of contraception by better educated and urban strata is a plausible cause of the observed fertility differentials because other proximate variables are unlikely. Coale's m, a presumed indicator of controlled fertility, suggests early fertility control in urban and better educated strata. The apparent preprogram beginnings of fertility control among educational and urban elites does not, however, minimize the awesome effects on fertility of the powerful Chinese family planning programs, once begun.
This study analyzes the variation in one measure of son preference that is of particular relevance in rural China: whether a woman considers it important to have a son, and the reasons why sons are important. To summarize our conclusions, we find that the expectation that a son will provide financial support in old age is strongly associated with the response that a son is important. This expectation is stronger in low income and mountainous villages, but it is weaker among women who earn cash income. The importance of a son is positively associated with ancestor worship and negatively associated with respondents' education, personal autonomy, the extent to which the husband shares housework, and exposure to the world beyond the village. We also find that sex-specific rates of infant mortality vary systematically with mother's response on the importance of a son, providing a test of the validity of our preference measure.A preference for sons is a feature of patrilineal, joint family systems typical in much of East
The 2000 census of China has several notable innovations, including a sample long form containing detailed items on migration, housing, and employment. Preliminary data indicate rapid urbanization and continued rapid social change in the 1990s, and apparent success in the government's drive to curtail population growth. Although a post-enumeration survey indicates that overall data quality is good, the rise of a mobile "floating population" and pressures of the birth planning program caused problems for the enumeration of migrants and infants. Data released to date have been silent on two important issues, fertility and rising sex ratios. Copyright 2001 by The Population Council, Inc..
The considerable increase in educational attainment of Chinese women from virtual complete illiteracy 50 years ago to current levels can be traced systematically for the first time on the basis of the 1982 census of China and a large sample survey of the same year. Until very recently we had known only the broad outlines of this major social transformation. Although even the newly available data are imperfect, their significance is illustrated by their strong and consistent association with such vital facts of life as the age at which women marry and the number of children they bear. Educational levels can be shown to have varied with degree of urbanization and rural development from the earliest days of the People's Republic.Major regions of China have distinctive educational histories. In all regions examined here, however, the course of educational change was affected to a greater or lesser degree by such major historical events as the great famine, the Cultural Revolution and the post-Mao reforms. It is now possible to measure with some precision the influence of these events on educational progress. This paper utilizes census and survey data to describe change in female education nationally and for four major regional populations from 1952 to 1982. Because it is plausible that the educational trends and differentials are related to other aspects of Chinese social, political and economic history, they are presented here in some detail.Our findings can be summarized as follows:1. The rise of female education occurred mainly in two periods the 1950s to 1958, and the late 1960s to mid 1970s.
The story of the rural Chinese family household in the post-Mao period is generally told in one of three ways, which might be labelled modernization, tradition restored, and demographic determinism. Modernization parallels the family theories of classical sociology: economic development and education tend to undermine extended family living arrangements by instilling nuclear family preferences, while the relaxation of migration restrictions allows young men to seek their fortune away from home. “Tradition restored” sees collectivization as having undermined the foundation of the extended family household, the family economy. The return of family farming has, in this view, restored the conditions under which the extended family can flourish. The demographic determinisi view assumes that family preferences persist but that demographic structures change. Rising life expectancies and declining fertility should increase rates of family extension, since smaller families mean that there will be fewer brothers available to live with a surviving parent. Thus as the birth control cohorts come of age, the prevalence of extended households should increase.
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