How Do Family Planning Policies and Economic Factors Relate to the Imbalance of Sex Ratio at Birth in China

The high sex ratio at birth and its gradual increase are one of the most significant demographic changes in China in the past 30 years. The sex ratio at birth first increased until 1994 and then stayed fluctuating before it decreased from 2000 on. Regarding the issue of whether or not China's current family planning policy affects and to what extent it affects the sex ratio at birth, starts with the gender selection choice under different family planning policy, a probability model is built to exam the impact from family planning policy on the sex ratio at birth, found that the sex ratio at birth is highly influenced by different family planning policy and gender selection behavior. On this basis, in order to verify the effects of policy, urbanization, economic growth, and urban-rural income gaps on the sex ratio at birth, this thesis constructed the model including variables as total fertility rate, urbanization rate, growth rate of GDP per capita, and urban-rural income gap, using the relevant data from 1985 to 2014. An empirical analysis found that increasing the total fertility rate can reduce the sex ratio at birth; the urbanization rate showed a negative relationship with sex ratio at birth. And the relationship between growth rate of GDP per capita and SRB is not strong. The widening income gap between urban and rural areas has contributed to the imbalance in the sex ratio at birth. (Less)