Gender imbalance in China: Dynamics and new trends

Given high population sex ratio for 60 years since China’s first population census in 1953 and skewed sex ratio at birth for 30 years, we review the determinants and expose the new patterns of gender imbalance in China. Using censuses data from 1982 to 2010, we adopt demographic method to decompose the population sex ratio into three factors --- population age structure, sex differential in mortality, sex ratio at birth. The results indicate that sex differential in mortality had little influence on high population sex ratio and started to decline the population sex ratio by 0.65 since 2000. The rapid aging of population age structure takes the main effect on declining population sex ratio, competing with the skewed sex ratio at birth which becomes the leverage to raise the population sex ratio in contemporary China. We also evaluate the quality of census data by comparing models with and without the effects of sex-selective underreporting, the under-enumerate of girls in census data is confirmed. Finally, we focus on the new trend of sex ratio at birth --- shifting pattern of sex-selection at birth, and approve that the decline in sex-selection at second birth fully offset by the increase in sex-selection at first birth, given the sex ratio at birth rising from 116.9 in 2000 to117.9 in 2010.