China’s Race with the Gender Gap

[xataxsata]

China’s Race with the Gender Gap

China has rolled out new population figures, unearthing—among a host of fresh data—some revealing information on the gender gap.

According to figures released Thursday by the National Bureau of Statistics, slightly less than 51.3% of China’s population is male, falling from just above 51.6% in the year 2000.

The new numbers can be explained partly by government efforts to fight sex-selective abortion, which, as the state-run Global Times noted in a report last year, became something of an epidemic after China introduced the one-child policy in 1980.

Although Beijing has rejected proposals to criminalize elective abortion of female fetuses, parts of China began banning the use of ultrasound to determine the sex of a fetus in the year 2000, periodically cracking down on clinics that continue to offer sex-selective abortion.

The narrowing of the gap might also have benefited from a gradual shift in favor of female children among middle class parents in larger cities, some of whom dread the expense of eventually having to pay for a son’s wedding and buy him an apartment.

Even with the improved balance, however, China still boasts 34 million “extra” men. While that might seem advantageous from the perspective of a young female looking for a mate, it’s contributing to what many demographers see as population rates that are too low to sustain China’s future economic needs.

In a 2003 paper studying the effects of China’s “missing girl” problem – the flip-side of the extra men problem – on the country’s population growth (PDF), sociologists Cai Yong and William Lavely calculated that China’s future population size would be reduced by almost 14% over the next century if China failed to improve the gender ratio as it stood in the year 2000. “A missing girl not only does not contribute to the population total, nor will her daughter, nor her daughter’s daughter,” the pair wrote. “The reproductive potential of the missing is lost to all future generations.”

China’s gender ratio “at birth” – in other words, the ratio of male newborns to female newborns – has improved in recent years, but it is actually slightly more skewed towards male children now than it was a decade ago, according to the new census figures. That means China’s missing girl, or extra men, problem is likely to have a major effect on the size of China’s population above and beyond the one-child policy.

Decreased population growth was precisely what the government was aiming for when it implemented the one-child policy in 1980, but that slowing of growth now poses a threat to China’s future economic development. According to various projections, the size of China’s labor force has already peaked, meaning there will be fewer workers around to take care of a rapidly expanding elderly population.

For that reason, says Nankai University economist Li Jianmin, China needs to seriously rethink the one-child policy. “It’s bringing about major social dilemmas,” said Mr. Li.

But in a country that, outside the major cities at least, still boasts a cultural preference for male children, it’s questionable how loosening or even eliminating the one-child rule would affect the gender gap. To truly balance China’s population, many observers say, leaders need to find ways to raise the value of women in Chinese society.

National Statistics Bureau commissioner Ma Jiantang says the government is pushing for more equality. “We have been and will continue to adopt more gender equality programs for employment and remunerations,” Mr. Ma said at a press conference on the new census figures, adding that the NSB itself employs more female staff than males.

As the numbers suggest, fixing the gap—and fast—is not just a matter of fairness, but of future economic growth.

China

 

[xataxsata]

China's One-Child Policy Brings the Challenge of an Aging Population

China has a problem, a rapidly aging population.

It’s a problem that some Asian countries, including Japan, have already faced, and one that is causing persistent struggles as economies continue to stagnate.

While it doesn’t seem a problem on the scale of the economic difficulties being faced in the United States right now, it could well have much greater consequences for the world in the longer term.

China has created the problem in part, themselves, through its strict one-child policy for families. Its argument has always been since it introduced the draconian policy in 1978 that a large population hinders economic growth. And it's indicated this week it won’t change the policy.

In fact, China’s birth policy is strict compared to any other country, but it hasn’t stopped a population increase.

Over the past ten years China's population has increase by nearly 74 million people, adding to its citizenry the population equivalent of California. That’s because while urban couples are limited to one child, rural families can still have two and minorities don’t have the same restrictions.

Despite the increase in population, the latest census numbers reveal a population time bomb is ticking.

The latest national census in China shows the number of elderly people in the country has jumped to more than 13.3 percent in a population of 1.34 billion, an increase of nearly 3 percentage points from the last census in 2000.

And the number of young people has plunged. They account now for 16.6 percent of the Chinese population, down 6.3 percentage points from a decade ago. Young people ages 14 and below accounted for 16.6 percent, down 6.3 percentage points from a decade ago.

It will mean, of course, there will be fewer young people in China to pay for and care for its growing elderly population.

The other significant number from this census shows the immense change in China over the past few decades from a largely agrarian society to an industrialized one. It shows that nearly half its population now lives in cities, up from 36 percent a decade ago.

"China is, for the first time, crossing a historical landmark from a country that's dominated by people engaging in agriculture, living in the countryside, to an urbanized society," said Wang Feng, a demographer who is director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy in Beijing.

And that is where the problem lies because, some argue, the numbers just don’t add up if it wishes to continue its economic progress.

It basically comes down to this: There will shortly not be enough young people joining the workforce to fill all those factories pumping out goods for the world.

The impact is being felt already, with workers pushing for increased wages as they realize they are more in demand. The situation is being exacerbated by China's rising inflation, currently at around 5 percent.

The main driver of this is soaring food costs, which is a problem for much of the world.

According to Hays, a recruitment agency based in Hong Kong, China-based companies have been forced to accept larger wage increases than employers in Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan.

According to its survey, nearly half the employers in mainland China said they raised salaries by between 6 percent and 10 percent last year, and nearly 9 in 10 say they expected to raise salaries by six 6 percent or more this year.

Already some companies are uprooting from the booming coastal towns and cities to try to get a cheaper workforce in other parts of the country that are not as developed. But some argue that is only putting off the problem, and wage inflation will eventually spread to there because of the demographics of China.

Its neighbor, Vietnam, is already benefiting from multinationals investing there as a balance to having all their eggs in one basket in China, so to speak.

Intel has, for instance, built a $1 billion state-of-the-art assembly plant there, in part because of its cheap and well-educated young workforce. And there are reports that companies are now looking to move from China to countries such as Cambodia and Burma to benefit from cheaper labor.

A brief search on the Internet immediately shows the problem. Plasticsnews.com reports an American-owned medical plastics firm, Guangzhou Fortunique Ltd, is looking to move some of its labor-intensive operations elsewhere in Asia.

After seeing a 20 percent increase in wages in the past year, Charles Hubbs, the company's director, was quoted as saying, “If I don’t move this out, in three years I won’t be cost-effective enough to keep the business.”

The company plans to keep its plastics operations in Guangzhou, near Hong Kong, but is likely to move its sewing and assembly operations to a country like Cambodia or Burma.

Not every company has the ability to move in search of cheaper labor. And this is where the population crisis in China will likely impact the U.S. and its consumers. As wages spiral upwards in China, those cheap goods people in the West have loved and bought for the last few decades will likely become a lot more expensive.

It's difficult to see any other country having the population or the wherewithal to make the products needed at the same price or in the same quantities to meet demand. And so China will likely remain the engine of the world economy, but its goods will also likely cost the American public more.

Read more: China's One-Child Policy Brings the Challenge of an Aging Population - FoxNews.com

 

[BigTree.CN]

This thread features nothing international, in order to make this thread more international so that it deserves to be in the world-affair forum, let me add some ingredients to this thread.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/world/asia/13iht-letter13.html?_r=1&ref=asia

A Campaign Against Girls in India

NEW DELHI — The figures tell an old and cruel story: the systematic elimination of girls in India. In the 2001 census, the sex ratio — the number of girls to every 1,000 boys — was 927 in the 0-6 age group. Preliminary data from the 2011 census show that the imbalance has worsened, to 914 girls for every 1,000 boys.

Women’s groups have been documenting this particular brand of gender violence for years. The demographer Ashish Bose and the economist Amartya Sen drew attention to India’s missing women more than a decade ago. The abortion of female fetuses has increased as medical technology has made it easier to detect the sex of an unborn child. If it is a girl, families often pressure the pregnant woman to abort. Sex determination tests are illegal in India, but ultrasound and in vitro fertilization centers often bypass the law, and medical terminations of pregnancy are easily obtained.

Some women, like 30-year-old Lakshmi Rani from Bhiwani district in Uttar Pradesh, have been pressured into multiple abortions. Ms. Rani’s first three pregnancies were terminated.

“My mother-in-law took me to the clinic herself,” she said, her voice matter-of-fact but barely audible. “It wasn’t my decision, but I didn’t have a choice. They didn’t want girls.”

Now her husband’s family is pushing her to get pregnant again, and she is hoping for a boy. Despite government campaigns against aborting female fetuses, she does not believe she will be allowed a choice.

Ms. Rani’s story is echoed across Uttar Pradesh, a state that has among the most skewed sex ratios in India. Census figures show the female-male ratio in the 0-6 year group slipping from 916 in 2001 to 899 in 2011.

In a 2007 Unicef report, Alka Gupta explained part of the problem: Discrimination against women, already entrenched in Indian society, has been bolstered by technological developments that now allow mobile sex selection clinics to drive into almost any village or neighborhood unchecked.

The 1994 Preconception and Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques Act was amended in 2003 to deal with the medical profession — the “supply side” of the practice of sex selection. However, the act has been poorly enforced.

The reasons behind the aborting of female fetuses are complex, according to the Center for Social Research, a research organization in New Delhi. Ranjana Kumari points out that the practice happens in some of India’s most prosperous states — Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh — indicating that economic growth does not guarantee a shift in social attitudes. She pinpoints several factors that account for the preference for boys in many parts of India, especially the conservative north: sons are the source of the family income, daughters marry into another family and are not available to look after their parents, dowries make a daughter a liability and, in agricultural areas, there is the fear that any woman who inherits land might take that property to her husband’s family.

Another form of violence against women — dowry deaths — is equally well-documented, and just as ugly, though Indians are so used to these that they have become almost invisible. The names of Sunita Devi, Seetal Gupta, Shabreen Tajm and Salma Sadiq will not resonate strongly for most Indians, though they were all in the news last week for similar reasons. Sunita Devi was strangled in Gopiganj, Uttar Pradesh, the pregnant Seetal Gupta was found unconscious and died in a Delhi hospital, Shabreen Tajm was burned to death in Tarikere, Karnataka, and Salma Sadiq suffered a miscarriage after being beaten by her husband in Bangalore.

Demands for larger dowries by the husband’s family were behind all of these acts of violence, so commonplace that they receive no more than a brief mention in the newspapers. National Crime Bureau figures indicate that reported dowry deaths have risen, with 8,172 in 2008, up from an estimated 5,800 a decade earlier.

Monobina Gupta, who has researched domestic violence for Jagori, a nongovernmental organization, draws a direct link between these killings and the abortion of female fetuses: “The dowry is part of the continuum of gender-based discrimination and violence, beginning with female feticide. Following the arrival of” economic “liberalization in 1992, the dowry list of demands has become longer. The opening up of the markets and expansion of the middle classes fueled consumerism and the demand for modern goods. For instance, studies show that color television sets or home video players have replaced black-and-white television sets, luxury cars the earlier Maruti 800, sophisticated gadgets basic food processors.

“It is similar to what is happening with female feticide,” she said. “As the middle class comes into more money, it is accessing more sophisticated medical technology either to ensure the birth of a boy or get rid of the unborn girl.”

What is the cost to the Indian family of having a girl, or to the boy’s family of forgoing a dowry? The economist T.C.A. Srinivasaraghavan puts the average dowry around 10,000 rupees, or $225. That average figure masks the exorbitant dowry demands that are often made by the family of the groom.

In response to the early findings from the 2011 census, the central government has set up an office to monitor the misuse of sex-selection techniques and the abortion of female fetuses. But real progress may come about only as social and cultural attitudes toward women change. In the meanwhile, women may have to seek their own solutions.

In one of Delhi’s upscale office areas, Kiran Verma, 28, surveyed her tiny shop, a photocopying center. Ms. Verma’s father left the family years ago, and her mother, a domestic worker, worries about covering the cost of her daughter’s wedding. But like many other urban women today, Ms. Verma has her own plans. “In another year I’ll have earned my dowry,” she said with confidence. “That way, I’ll have some choice over the family I marry into.”

Young women earning their own dowries is not the radical solution — the total eradication of the dowry and discrimination against women — that a generation of feminists have dreamed about. But in their efforts to redefine themselves as generators of wealth, rather than as liabilities to their families, Ms. Verma and her generation of Indian women may be striking a few blows of their own against the prejudices that contribute to gender-based abortion.

 

[Brotherhood]

China rank 57, India 113 on Global gender gap report
Global Gender Gap Report: Norway tops the world economic Forum’s Gender Gap Index « Blog JUMP

 

[xataxsata]

So off topic posting and flame makes interesting??

Why don't you just comment on the topic or leave.

 

[rcrmj]

ops mouse jumped to thanked``` my mistake

 

[below_freezing]

The gender gap is indeed sad, because I love Chinese girls =)

My home province is very guilty, and though I love it, I must admit girls have a far higher status in the north and the east. In the south, girls have lower status and it makes me mad as hell.

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

The gender gap is indeed sad, because I love Chinese girls =)

Exactly right buddy.

Chinese girls are brilliant, the more we have, the better.

They work hard, have a high standard of education, and are beautiful as well.

 

[below_freezing]

Exactly right buddy.

Chinese girls are brilliant, the more we have, the better.

They work hard, have a high standard of education, and are beautiful as well.

The gender gap is worst in south-central provinces like Sichuan, Guizhou, Hubei, Hunan, and Jiangxi, but the worst offender is Guangxi by far. Guangdong also has bad statistics but that might be because of migrant workers being more biased towards men.

Shandong, Shanxi, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Tianjin, Beijing and Liaoning have great statistics due to wealth. Conversely, Tibet, Qinghai, Gansu and Yunnan also have great statistics despite abject poverty because of minorities. Seems like the 1 child policy seriously does have an effect on the boy/girl ratio.