CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 447Demographic Trends and Gender PreferencesReproductive Health and ContraceptionInsurance, Mortality, Demography, Risk Management

Five Decades of Missing Females in China

Open access
Coale, Ansley J., Banister, Judith·1994·Demography
DOI 10.2307/2061752
Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

This paper seeks to explain the dearth of females in the population of China in cohorts born from the late 1930s to the present. We demonstrate that in virtually all cohorts. the shortage of females in comparison with males is revealed when the cohort is first enumerated in a census. Subsequently it barely changes, an indication that female losses occur very early in life. Using the high-quality data from the censuses and fertility surveys in China, we show that many of the births of the girls missing in the censuses were not reported in the surveys because they died very young. The incidence of excess early female mortality (probably infanticide) declined precipitously in the Communist period, but not to zero. The recent escalation in the proportion of young females missing in China has been caused largely by rapidly escalating sex-selective abortion.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.2307/2061752

Cites

10 of 10 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

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?

  • Using high-quality demographic data collected or made available up to the 1990s, Coale & Banister (1994) documented the drop in the estimated excess female to male infant deaths ratio, from over 15% for births in the 1930s, 10% in the 1940s, and only about 2% for those born in the 1960s and 1970s, before edging up in the early 1980s.

    “Using high-quality demographic data collected or made available up to the 1990s,Coale & Banister (1994) documented the drop in the estimated excess female to male infant deaths ratio, from over 15% for births in the 1930s, 10% in the 1940s, and only about 2% for those born in the 1960s and 1970s, before edging up in the early 1980s.”

    From The Social and Sociological Consequences of China's One-Child Policy (2021) · cites this paper as Coale & Banister 1994

    Split into 2 atoms — 1 confirmed, 1 partially supported, 0 disputed, 0 misattributed, 0 unverifiable. Expand the claim to see per-atom verdicts.

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

  • Demographers have found an increasingly skewed Chinese gender ratio, which may result from female infanticide, parents' refusal to register daughters, parents' abandonment or lethal neglect of daughters, sex selection through selective abortion, or some combination of these factors.

    “Demographers have found an increasingly skewed Chinese gender ratio, which may result from female infanticide, parents' refusal to register daughters, parents' abandonment or lethal neglect of daughters, sex selection through selective abortion, or some combination of these factors (Arnold and Liu Zhaoxiang 1986;Coale and Banister 1994;Johnson 1996;Li Yongping and Peng Xizhe 2000;Zeng et al. 1993”

    From China's One-Child Policy and the Empowerment of Urban Daughters (2002) · cites this paper as Coale and Banister 1994

    Split into 2 atoms — 1 confirmed, 1 partially supported, 0 disputed, 0 misattributed, 0 unverifiable. Expand the claim to see per-atom verdicts.

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

  • According to China's 1990 census, there were 1.083 males for every female born between 1980 and 1984.

    “According to China's 1990 census, there were 1.083 males for every female born between 1980 and 1984 (Coale and Banister 1994:461), the period when most of my students were born.”

    From China's One-Child Policy and the Empowerment of Urban Daughters (2002) · cites this paper as Coale and Banister 1994:461

    The section on ratios by birth cohort says the authors use the 1990 census to examine male-to-female ratios, supporting the claim’s general subject. But the passage on Table 3 identifies its figures as chiefly from fertility surveys, not the 1990 census, and lists 1.087 for births in 1980–1984; it lists 1.083 for 1978–1982. The retrieved passages therefore do not support the claimed figure and source of that figure. (LLM, conf=0.78)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

  • Soon after the one-child policy was put into force nationwide, sex ratio at birth resumed an upward tick.

    “Soon after the one-child policy was put into force nationwide, sex ratio at birth, which had started to return to normal during the first decades of the socialist rule (Coale & Banister 1994), resumed an upward tick.”

    From The Social and Sociological Consequences of China's One-Child Policy (2021) · cites this paper as Coale & Banister 1994

  • The census of 2000 put China's population at 1.27 billion, although some demographers regard this number as an underestimate.

    “The census of 2000 put the population at 1.27 billion, 12 although some demographers regard this number as an underestimate. 13”

    From The Effect of China's One-Child Family Policy after 25 Years (2005) · cites this paper as [13]

    The sections on Chinese censuses discuss data through 1990, and the Notes discuss reporting and undercounting in earlier censuses. A search for the 2000 census, 1.27 billion, and an underestimate of that count found no passage addressing the claim. (LLM, conf=0.78)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

1 of the 11 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 3

  1. State Family Planning Commission of China (SFPC). 1990. Data of China Fertility and Contraception Survey (Whole Country) (in Chinese). Beijing: China Population Press.
  2. Percent Sampling Tabulation on the 1990 Population Census of the People's Republic of China (in Chinese). Beijing: China Statistical Press.
  3. Wolf, A.P. and C. Huang. 1980. Marriages and Adoption in China, 1845-1945. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Coale, A. J., & Banister, J.
Affiliations
  • Princeton University (US)
  • United States Census Bureau (US)
Venue
Demography
Publisher
Duke University Press
Published
1994-08-01
Volume
31
Issue
3
Pages
459-479
ISSN
  • 0070-3370 (ISSN-L)
  • 1533-7790
DOI
10.2307/2061752
OpenAlex
W1969699349
Cited by
447
References
11
Citations by year
2026: 5 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 21 · 2021: 10 · 2020: 57 · 2019: 10 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 11 · 2016: 12 · 2015: 13 · 2014: 12 · 2013: 20 · 2012: 19
FWCI
22.97
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Demography (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
  • DigitalGeorgetown (Georgetown University Library) (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Demographic Trends and Gender Preferences
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Reproductive Health and Contraception
  • Social Sciences › Demography › Insurance, Mortality, Demography, Risk Management
Keywords
sex ratio at birth, sex-selective abortion, infanticide, female mortality, census undercounting, communist era, China
MeSH terms
Abortion, Legal, Adolescent, Adult, Cause of Death, Child, Child, Preschool, China, Cross-Cultural Comparison, Demography, Developing Countries, Female, Humans, Infant, Infant, Newborn, Infanticide, Male, Middle Aged, Mortality, Pregnancy, Sex Preselection, Sex Ratio, Cohort Studies, Survival Analysis

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