Author: Tofu milk
Edit: Yakult
In the seventh census, the sex ratio at birth was 111.3, down 6.8 from 2010.
The sex ratio at birth is generally considered to be 100 based on females, and the number of males corresponds to it. Simply put, if 100 girls and 106 boys are born in a certain place in a year, then the sex ratio of the birth sex in that place is 106. In general, the sex ratio of the natural population at birth can not exceed 107 at most, nor less than 102.
China's sex ratio at birth began to break the 107 warning line in the early 1980s, then soared all the way and has gradually decreased in recent years, which is already good news.
Some of the reasons for the decline in the sex ratio of the birth population in recent years may be unexpected.
In the seventh census, compared with 2010, the urban population increased by 236.42 million, the rural population decreased by 164.36 million, and the proportion of urban population increased by 14.21 percentage points, which shows that the urbanization rate in the past decade is still very fast.
This means that a large number of rural people have to go to the city to buy houses. Studies have shown that more than a quarter of migrant workers are willing to buy a house in cities and towns, and more than 40% of them sell houses in cities and towns because they buy a marriage house for themselves or their children to start a family. Another study of Hebei found that nearly 60% of men agree that buying a house in the city is a necessary condition for marriage.
Along with this decade of urbanization, there is also a generation that began to have a deformed sex ratio at birth in the early 1980s, which entered the marriage age, and found that due to gender imbalance, the squeeze on male marriage has intensified. Men have to pay more to get married, including, but not limited to buying houses in towns and cities, and increasingly high bride price gifts in some areas.
House prices, for most of the past two decades, have also risen, sometimes very quickly, increasing the burden of buying a house in a town.
The cost of raising children is rising, and the reality of the intensification of the male marriage squeeze makes even patriarchal people reluctant to have more sons.
The concept in the countryside is "raising children and preventing old age", so they are more willing to have sons. For thousands of years, sons in the countryside have been strong laborers and good thugs who tend to the homes. But under the wave of urbanization, farming has long been a low-income business, and the birth of sons no longer has the role of traditional rural areas, but will be because of buying houses in the city, so that rural parents carry a heavier economic burden - men of marriageable age often do not have much money, or have to empty the "six wallets" of their elders.
What about young rural men who don't want to go to the city? Some are very good and can mix well in the countryside, and some are simply lazy and don't want to struggle. Even so, the cost of their marriage has been inflated by the squeeze on marriage.
As a result, there is a situation of "raising children and eating the old" due to the increase in the cost of marriage and the lazy people in the countryside. Studies have shown that having a son in the countryside increases the likelihood that the rural elderly will fall into economic poverty, but fortunately, it can significantly reduce their loneliness.
This dampens people's enthusiasm for having sons. A survey of women of childbearing age in Chongqing, Sichuan, Guizhou, Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan shows that the vast majority of women believe that the gender structure of the ideal child is 1 male and 1 female, except for 0 males and 0 females, the proportion of women with an ideal of 2 males and 0 females is the lowest, and even lower than the proportion of 0 males and 2 females.
Therefore, the wave of urbanization and the rise in housing prices have somewhat unexpectedly contributed to the reduction of the sex ratio of the birth population. Some studies have found that when the house price-to-income ratio rises by 1 unit, the birth sex ratio in urban and rural areas will drop significantly by 0.2%, of which the increase in house prices significantly reduces the birth sex ratio in rural areas, and there is no significant impact on the birth sex ratio in urban areas.
This process is formed by channeling the squeeze of male marriage, and on the other hand, it also tacitly acknowledges that the parents have the responsibility to buy houses and other family property for male offspring rather than female offspring, or hides a certain idea of inequality.
In any case, the sex ratio of the birth population has gradually declined in the past decade, and it is expected to fall to the normal range in the future.
Swipe up and down to see references:
The main data of the Seventh National Population Census are http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/zxfb/202105/t20210510_1817176.html
Song Jiahao, Zheng Jiaxi, Wu Haitao." Raising children to prevent the elderly or "raising children to eat the elderly": the impact of male heirs on rural elderly poverty[j].Agricultural Technology and Economics, 2019(12):131-142.
SHI Renbing,YANG Hui. Fear of two men: a child's gender preference that deserves attention[j].Journal of Demography,2021,43(1):15-25.
KANG Chuankun,WEN Qiang,CHU Tianshu. House or son?—— house price to birth sex ratio[j].Economics (Quarterly), 2020, 19(03):913-934.
Complete this time