CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 603Demographic Trends and Gender PreferencesChina's Socioeconomic Reforms and GovernanceGender, Labor, and Family Dynamics

The "Missing Girls" of China and the Unintended Consequences of the One Child Policy

Ebenstein, Avraham·2010·Journal of Human Resources
DOI 10.1353/jhr.2010.0003
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

High ratios of males to females in China have concerned researchers (Sen 1990, Yi et al. 1993) and the recent increase has alarmed policymakers worldwide. This paper presents an analysis of China’s census data that indicates that the “missing girls” phenomenon is causally linked to enforcement of the One Child Policy. Fertility is lower and sex ratios are higher among those under stricter fertility control, and the overall increase in the sex ratio is driven by an increase in the prevalence of sex selection among first and second births. By exploiting regional and temporal variation in fines levied for unauthorized births, I find that higher fine regimes discourage fertility, but are associated with higher ratios of males to females.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1353/jhr.2010.0003

Cites

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Sex ratio at birth was especially elevated among high parity births and in areas with strict policy implementation.

    “Sex ratio at birth was especially elevated among high parity births and in areas with strict policy implementation (Cai & Lavely 2003, Ebenstein 2010, Guilmoto & Ren 2011, Li et al. 2011).”

    From The Social and Sociological Consequences of China's One-Child Policy (2021) · cites this paper as Ebenstein 2010

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Ebenstein, A.
Corresponding author
Ebenstein, Avraham
ORCID
Ebenstein, Avraham
Venue
Journal of Human Resources
Publisher
University of Wisconsin Press
Published
2010
Volume
45
Issue
1
Pages
87-115
ISSN
  • 0022-166X (ISSN-L)
  • 1548-8004
DOI
10.1353/jhr.2010.0003
OpenAlex
W4234238734
Cited by
603
References
0
Citations by year
2026: 35 · 2025: 84 · 2024: 43 · 2023: 47 · 2022: 45 · 2021: 43 · 2020: 82 · 2019: 48 · 2018: 28 · 2017: 28 · 2016: 23 · 2015: 22 · 2014: 21 · 2013: 19 · 2012: 14
FWCI
35.88
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
  • The Journal of Human Resources (publishedVersion)
  • Project Muse (Johns Hopkins University) (submittedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Demographic Trends and Gender Preferences
  • Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance
  • Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics
Keywords
missing girl, one-child policy, sex-selective abortion, gender discrimination, China

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review