Cited by 424Demographic Trends and Gender PreferencesFamily Dynamics and RelationshipsGender, Labor, and Family Dynamics

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 98 of the 98 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; 3 of the 55 sources its claims cite were checked for support.

China's One-Child Policy and the Empowerment of Urban Daughters

Open access
Fong, Vanessa L.·2002·American Anthropologist

Abstract

Urban daughters have benefited from the demographic pattern produced by China's one–child policy. In the system of patrilineal kinship that has long characterized most of Chinese society, parents had little incentive to invest in their daughters. Singleton daughters, however, enjoy unprecedented parental support because they do not have to compete with brothers for parental investment. Low fertility enabled mothers to get paid work and, thus, gain the ability to demonstrate their filiality by providing their own parents with financial support. Because their mothers have already proven that daughters can provide their parents with old age support, and because singletons have no brothers for their parents to favor, daughters have more power than ever before to defy disadvantageous gender norms while using equivocal ones to their own advantage. [Keywords: gender, family, fertility, demography, China]

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1525/aa.2002.104.4.1098

Cites

98 of 98 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Nothing to recompute.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

84 Own interpretation · 41 No basis given · 30 Own result · 15 Sources not found · 9 Not checked yet · 5 No full text of the sources · 5 Own method · 2 Partly supported · 1 Couldn’t confirm · accuracy not yet measured

Show all 96 claims

  • Probably not a substantial claim. 38
  • It may state two separate claims as one. 72
96 of 96
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The experiences of the families in Dalian are sufficiently representative of urban Chinese families for the paper's conclusions about urban daughters.

    “In cities like Dalian, however, it is dear that daughters would have been less able to take advantage of available opportunities if they had to compete with brothers for family resources, and if their mothers had not demonstrated that women can support their parents in old age.”
    “My findings are not representative of the experiences of the highest-ranked university graduates who dominate intellectual discourse, or of the rural citizens who constituted 64 percent (China Population Information and Research Center 2001) of the Chinese population in 2000.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Parents' statements about not using sex-selective abortion or other abuses are truthful enough to support the claim that such abuses did not occur in Dalian.

    “While medical techniques for detecting the sex of fetuses have been available (although illegal) in Dalian since the 1980s, the mothers of boys I tutored denied ever having used abortion to avoid having daughters and maintained that only farmers would do this.”
    “While 1 heard rumors about farmers committing infanticide, physically forcing women to undergo sterilizations or abortions, or abandoning or lethally neglecting daughters, I never heard of such abuses occurring in Dalian.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Survey respondents' self-reports about siblings, parental employment, living arrangements, and other family characteristics are accurate enough to support the paper's findings.

    “According to survey respondents, 25 percent of their mothers (N = 2,190) and 12 percent of their fathers (N = 2,190) have been laid off or given early retirement.”
    “Only six percent of my survey respondents (N = 2,167) had siblings.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The housing reforms of 1997 allowed work units to sell apartments on the private market instead of assigning them to workers in exchange for low, subsidized rents.

    “This disadvantage became particularly onerous after the housing reforms of 1997, which allowed work units to sell apartments on the private market instead of assigning them to workers in exchange for low, subsidized rents.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Global processes of industrialization, modernization, and urbanization have led to low fertility in all developed countries and many developing countries worldwide.

    “Global processes of industrialization, modernization, and urbanization have led to low fertility in all developed countries and many developing countries worldwide.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    People of every generation have tried to use gender norms to attain their own desires.

    “People of every generation have tried to use gender norms to attain their own desires (whether they involved socioeconomic success or the maintenance of strong ties to one's parents)”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The efforts of Chinese daughters born prior to the one-child policy were severely hindered by a patrilineal system that overwhelmingly favored sons at the expense of their sisters.

    “but the efforts of Chinese daughters born prior to the onechild policy were severely hindered by a patrilineal system that overwhelmingly favored sons at the expense of their sisters.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The midlevel job market has greater demand for female workers.

    “Recognizing the midlevel job market's greater demand for female workers”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Family background, career success, and educational attainment are important spouse selection criteria for men and women alike.

    “Family background, career success, and educational attainment are important spouse selection criteria for men and women alike, 9”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    As in the past, grooms are expected to provide marital housing.

    “As in the past, grooms are expected to provide marital housing.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The ability to live up to the expectation of providing marital housing remains an important determinant of whether a man can win a bride.

    “The ability to live up to this expectation remains an important determinant of whether a man can win a bride.”
11 of 11

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?

Citations

Cites

Show all 96 references

Research works printed but not linked: 10

  1. Anagnost Ann, 1988, Family Violence and Magical Violence: The “Woman‐as‐Victim” in China's One‐Child Family Policy, Women and Language, 1, 16
  2. Bourdieu Pierre, 2001, Masculine Domination
  3. Chu Henry, 2001, India Joins China as Member of the Billion‐Population Club, Los Angeles Times, March, 29, 9
  4. Shi Dalian, 1999, Dalian Jiaoyu Yaolan 1997‐1998 (a Survey of Dalian Education 1997‐1998)
  5. Yongping Li, 2000, The Changing Population of China, 64
  6. Genze Luo, 1996, Yuefu Wenxueshi (The History of Yuefu Literature)
  7. Unger Jonathan, 1993, Chinese Families in the Post‐Mao Era, 25
  8. Zheng Wang, 2000, Chinese Society: Change, Conflict and Resistance, 62
  9. White Tyrene, 2000, Chinese Society: Change, Conflict and Resistance, 102
  10. Yi Zeng, 2000, The Changing Population of China, 91

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Metadata

Authors
Fong, V. L.
Affiliations
University of Michigan (US)
Corresponding author
Fong, Vanessa L.
Venue
American Anthropologist
Publisher
Wiley
Published
2002-12
Volume
104
Issue
4
Pages
1098-1109
ISSN
  • 0002-7294 (ISSN-L)
  • 1548-1433
OpenAlex
W2069156143
Cited by
424
References
96
Citations by year
2026: 29 · 2025: 32 · 2024: 25 · 2023: 16 · 2022: 20 · 2021: 53 · 2020: 79 · 2019: 18 · 2018: 22 · 2017: 14 · 2016: 17 · 2015: 13 · 2014: 12 · 2013: 16 · 2012: 15
FWCI
5.20
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • American Anthropologist (publishedVersion)
  • Deep Blue (University of Michigan) (submittedVersion)
Funders
  • National Science Foundation
  • City University of Hong Kong
  • McGill University
  • Society for Cultural Anthropology
  • Association for Feminist Anthropology
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Demographic Trends and Gender Preferences
  • Social Sciences › Demography › Family Dynamics and Relationships
  • Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics
Keywords
one-child policy, gender norms, patrilineal kinship, parental investment, filiality, fertility decline, gender inequality, family structure

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.

A language model drew the claims from the paper on 2026-10-10, under version 3 of the claim definition (model deepseek-v4.1-flash, prompt extract-v3).

A second model labelled each claim on 2026-10-10 (model jev-1.13-20260917, definition revision gold-guideline-v0.2).

Cited sources are checked with a language model’s help (gpt-6-sol).

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