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This paper uses data from censuses and surveys to re-estimate mortality levels and trends in China from the 1960's to 2000. We use the General Growth Balance method to evaluate the completeness of death reporting above the youngest ages in three censuses of the People's Republic of China from 1982 to 2000, concluding that reporting quality is quite high, and revisit the completeness of death recording in the 1973-75 Cancer Epidemiology Survey. Estimates of child mortality from a variety of direct and indirect sources are reviewed, and best estimates arrived at. Our estimates show a spectacular improvement in life expectancy in China: from about 60 years in the period 1964-82 to nearly 70 years in the period 1990-2000, with a further improvement to over 71 years by 2000. We discuss why survival rates continue improving in China despite reduced government involvement in and increasing privatization of health services, with little insurance coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tests a new strategy for simultaneously studying internal migration within, and international migration from, China. Our theoretical discussion draws on ideas from migration-networks theory and studies of the transition to a market-oriented economy. Data collection is modelled on the Mexican Migration Project. We find that education is more important in initiating internal migration than international migration. Second, although the role of migration networks at a community level seems similar to that for Mexico–USA migration, the networks at a family level show a different pattern. Third, there is evidence that internal and international migration are competing options. Finally, we find that individuals with cadres (public officials) in the family are less likely to undertake internal migration, but more likely to participate in international migration, a finding that highlights the continuing significance of the cadres in coastal rural China. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper introduces a new modified Lee–Carter model for analysing short-base-period mortality data, for which the original Lee–Carter model produces severely fluctuating predicted age-specific mortality. Approximating the unknown parameters in the modified model by linearized cubic splines and other additive functions, the model can be simplified into a logistic regression when fitted to binomial data. The expected death rate estimated from the modified model is smooth, not only over ages but also over years. The analysis of mortality data in China (2000–08) demonstrates the advantages of the new model over existing models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports a provincial-level analysis of the way in which various socio-economic and socio-demographic determinants influence the decision to discriminate against daughters in China. While most existing studies use the infant or child sex ratio as the only variable to be explained, this study analyses separately the two main discriminatory practices: sex-selective abortion (with sex ratio at birth as a proxy) and neglect of girls' health care (with excess infant mortality among females as a proxy). The analysis helps to illuminate the circumstances that encourage sex-selective behaviours, which appear to be dictated mainly by extreme poverty, family support to the elderly, and father's education, together with the social pressure on couples to adhere to traditional values and roles and the constraints on family size. While sex-selective abortion appears to result from long-term strategies to optimize family composition, lethal neglect is the immediate result of economic constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though adoption in China is known to have increased as more girls were abandoned and became available for adoption following the introduction of the country's one-child policy in the 1980's, little is known about Chinese adoption practices. This paper investigates the factors affecting adoption in China in the period 1950-87 using data from the National Two-Per-Thousand Sample Survey on Fertility and Contraception of 1988. The results show that the national adoption rate was 2.3 per cent Childless women were more likely than women with children to adopt and did not show a sex preference. Women with children by birth used adoption to secure a child of the 'missing' sex. Women who had experienced the death of a child were more likely to adopt than those who had not. Women with children may have used adoption as a strategy to circumvent the strict family planning policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a study of the influence of children's marriage form and other characteristics on whether married couples in three villages in rural China establish a family separate from the joint family of their natal kin. The results reveal that, for children with a brother, sons in virilocal marriages are more likely than daughters in uxorilocal marriages to establish a family separate from that of their parents and do so earlier than these daughters. However, among children without a brother, sons and daughters do not differ significantly in whether or when they divide off from their extended family and set up a new family. The majority of family division occurs in the first 5 years after marriage for sons and daughters. Number of siblings and other characteristics also affect the likelihood of family division. We discuss demographic, socio-economic, and cultural causes underlying this phenomenon as well as its social implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genealogy is the written record of family or lineage members descended from a common ancestor or ancestors. These materials have long been used by demographers in their investigation of past demographic behaviour. Most available genealogies, however, are the records of members of surviving patrilineages. Among the many reasons why these patrilineages have avoided extinction is the fact that they have usually experienced favourable demographic conditions. In consequence, their genealogies could be a biased data source if used in the study of the history of the whole population. This paper examines this issue, using evidence on the historical experience of the Chinese population and computer microsimulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a survey from four rural counties, this paper examines the progression to a second birth and the sex ratio at second birth. Women whose first-born is a boy are less likely to have a second child and the sex ratio at second birth is normal, while women whose first-born is a girl are much more likely to have a second child and the sex ratio at second birth is very high. Furthermore, women's educational attainment and county of residence affect the sex ratio at second birth. The author speculates that the high sex ratio at second birth is more likely to be achieved through sex-selective abortion for women with higher educational attainment, and for women with lower educational attainment by such other means as under-reporting of female births and giving up female babies for adoption. County of residence has the greatest impact on the percentage of women who have a second birth and the sex ratio at second birth. This effect relates to the way the family planning policy is enforced in each county. The paper suggests that local family planning offices benefit financially by receiving fines and fees from couples who violate the family planning policy, and use the money to enforce the policy among those who cannot afford the fines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Demographers, as early as Malthus, have assumed that the preventive checks, delayed marriage and celibacy, were absent in traditional China. In this paper on the Qing (1644-1911) imperial lineage, we demonstrate that, instead, there may have been a different, more `modern' preventive check: fertility control within marriage. Marital fertility of lineage couples during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was low to moderate. Such low fertility was the product of three behavioural mechanisms: late starting, early stopping and, most significantly, long spacing. Couples apparently regulated their fertility according to their economic resources and the sex of their surviving children. Moreover, they did so, we suggest, by regulating their coital frequency. Deliberate fertility control, in other words, was already within the - calculus of conscious choice' for some Chinese well before this century. The speed of contemporary sinitic fertility transitions may accordingly be attributed to the fact that they did not require a change in attitudes, only the diffusion of new incentives and effective technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents detailed evidence on fertility levels and trends in China from a survey conducted in 1992 by the State Family Planning Commission. The evidence is analyzed internally and by comparison with evidence from the Census of Population of 1990 and from two previous surveys. The results of the 1992 survey, which indicated fertility levels far below replacement during the early 1990s, have been greeted with considerable scepticism. Close attention has therefore been paid to evidence and argument bearing on the completeness of reporting of births in the survey. While the survey data probably understate fertility levels after 1990, the results for 1990 and before appear to be generally reliable. Even allowing for substantial underreporting of births during 1991-92, it appears likely that Chinese fertility did, in fact, fall to replacement level during the early 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parity progression measures are uniquely suited to the study of fertility in China, because Chinese policies and programmes focus so closely on parity and birth order. In this paper we present period parity progression ratios for China and its urban and rural areas for the years 1955-81, using the birth history data from the one-per-thousand fertility survey of 1982. Our period parity progression ratios differ from those introduced by Henry in that they provide an overall level of fertility which may be compared with measures based on age-specific birth rates. We compare the two measures empirically for China, finding both similarities and divergences, and then analyse the relation between them. It is suggested that, where fertility is low and fluctuating, as in China, the parity-progression- based measures provide a substantially truer picture of fertility levels and trends than do age-based measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Malthusian theories are not an exclusive intellectual discovery of European writers. They have occurred elsewhere, in period of rapid population increase. In this paper, a Chinese example is analysed and the relevant essays translated. The essays were written at the same time that Malthus published his ideas and contain most of Ii is philosophical notions but are not supported by any statistical evidence. Unlike those of Malthus in Europe they did not evoke any controversy in China, although their author was well known as a man of letters and close to the central authority. Today, of course, Malthusianism is a subject much discussed in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human populations have lived on the earth for millions of years, yet the study of population history only began to be established in the mid-twentieth century. In spite of the considerable progress in the study of historical demography which has since been made, there have been hardly any detailed studies of fertility and mortality before the sixteenth century. This study, by analysing a set of Chinese genealogies, examines long-term mortality patterns in a selected clan population over a period of more than 1000 years. The result shows that, in this selected population, mortality fluctuated around a relatively high level and showed no secular change over the very long period studied. The study also provides a comparison between the mortality patterns found in the selected population and those observed in a much larger Chinese lineage population, as well as those recorded among the British elites born between the sixteenth and the early nineteenth century. Based on the findings of this research, the paper presents some tentative suggestions about long-term mortality changes in Chinese history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article it is shown that the extremely low fertility rates reported in China - well below replacement level - derived from the Chinese Survey in 1992 are false. Serious under-reporting of most recent births in China was caused by various factors, among them high pressure on officials to achieve the birth control targets set, the design of the questionnaire, and the employment of family planning workers as enumerators. The most likely value of total fertility in 1991-92 was at or slightly below replacement level, i.e. between 2.1 and 2.2 children per woman. Even after adjustment for serious under- reporting, marital fertility fell substantially between 1990 and 1992, mainly as a consequence of tighter implementation of the strict family planning programme. Rapid economic development also contributed to the fall, as many young people in the country left farming to engage in non-agricultural activities locally, or migrated to urban areas, particularly in the southern part of the country, where economic boom conditions may also have contributed to reduced or delayed fertility. In conclusion, some suggestions for future research on population policy and its implementation in China are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on local area variations in reproductive behaviour in China. China's spectacular fertility decline has been documented at the national and provincial levels, as has its unique and effective family planning programme. The 1982 One-per-Thousand Fertility Survey provides an opportunity for the study of reproductive behaviour in local communities. Education is the one independent socio-economic variable available in the survey. Initial analyses of the survey at the national level by Chinese researchers were based mainly on manual tabulations of the data. Production brigades and urban neighbourhoods are meaningful units of social and political organization for many aspects of the lives of married couples in China. They are likely to reflect distinctive levels of living, resources, and the functioning of political and economic policy at the local level. China has a strong central government which operates through interlocking parallel lines of bureaucratic and political control at successive levels down to the local units. However, the final effects of central policies are neither uniform nor monolithic. Responses at the local level are necessarily affected by local conditions.

This article analyzes the population policy in mainland China. Population policy in Communist China has little demographic significance. It is of interest mainly for what it reveals about the nature of the administrative and decision making process in Peking. Although evidence is often ambiguous, distinct phases of population policy can be distinguished, during which policy shifted from categoric denial of population problems to an endorsement of birth control and back to the denial of population problems.

This study identifies a significant increase in sterility among rural, but not urban, Chinese women who were conceived and born during the 1959–61 famine that resulted from the Great Leap Forward. Applied to data from two large-scale, nationally representative, sample surveys of Chinese women of childbearing age conducted in 1997 and 2001 by the State Family Planning Commission, difference-in-differences analysis revealed that exposure to the famine while in the womb caused an increase in the risk of sterility amongst the adult women surveyed of 1.1 per cent. This is a substantial increase given that the overall prevalence of primary and permanent sterility is only slightly over 1 per cent in China. These findings support the hypothesis that a woman exposed to acute malnutrition while in the womb may experience a long-term negative impact on her reproductive system, which could result in permanently impaired fecundity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Because sex ratios at birth have risen sharply in China in recent decades, an increasing proportion of men will be unable to find a bride, and will face old age without the support of a wife and children. We project the proportions of never-married men and their geographical distribution in China in the coming decades. Our projections assume that two tendencies in current marriage patterns will persist: that women will continue to migrate to wealthier areas and to prefer men with better prospects. We find that, by 2030, more than 20 per cent of men in China aged 30–39 will never have married, and that the proportion will be especially high among poor men in low-income provinces that are least able to provide social protection programmes. The projected geographic concentration of bachelors could be socially disruptive, and the results suggest a need to expand the coverage and central financing of social protection programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically, the Chinese government's family planning (FP) policy has emphasized post-partum IUD use after first birth and sterilization after subsequent births. Was the influence of this policy-driven programme on women's contraceptive choices weakened by a reproductive health intervention programme based on the idea of enabling and encouraging clients to make an informed choice? Multilevel analyses of cross-sectional data from baseline (2003) and endline (2005) surveys conducted as part of the evaluation of a large-scale UNFPA RH/FP programme show significant reductions in the uptake of methods emphasized by official policy between the two surveys. But county-level effects are highly significant, suggesting the continuation of a strong exogenous influence on women's choices. The results suggest that, while the intervention had the effect of weakening the top-down approach towards promoting methods, family planning workers continued to be influential in promoting sterilization for women at higher parities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An analysis of data mainly from China's 1990 and 2000 censuses and 2005 mini-census shows how fertility decline between 1975 and 2005 in the province of Guangdong has been influenced by both fertility policy and economic and social development. Guangdong's development since 1975 has been very rapid and has attracted huge numbers of migrants from other provinces. The analysis of the province's fertility trend from 1975 shows clearly the influence of fertility policy on the trend. The analysis also shows that economic development has brought about large changes in population composition by urban/rural residence, education, occupation, and migration status, which, together with large fertility differentials by these characteristics, have contributed substantially to Guangdong's fertility decline, in large part through changes in proportions currently married. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a nationally representative sample of 8,099 Chinese drawn from the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS), this study investigated the long-term health consequences of early-life nutritional status, sibling sex-composition, childhood socio-economic conditions, and place of birth on mortality at ages 80 and above between 1998 and 2005. Better nutritional status in childhood predicted lower mortality at ages 80 and above, net of childhood circumstances, adult socio-economic status, and health behaviours. In addition, sibling sex-composition had long-term health consequences, net of childhood and adult characteristics, such that women benefited from having grown up in families with only daughters, while men benefited from having grown up in families with both sons and daughters. Childhood socio-economic status was only marginally related to old-age mortality and this association was attenuated further by the inclusion of adult characteristics. Place of birth was not a significant predictor of old-age mortality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a longitudinal data-set (the China Health and Nutrition Survey) we explored the effect of various economic factors, including household wealth, employment sector, and involvement in a household business on the division of extended families in China's transitional economy. Results from event history analyses suggest that these economic factors act as either a dividing or a unifying force on the extended family. Household wealth reduces the risk of family division, but the effect is weaker for families in which parents have upper secondary education. In addition, an extended family is more likely to divide when married children work in the state sector. Further, the probability of family division is higher in families where daughters-in-law work in the state sector than in those with sons in this sector. Finally, involvement in a household business for married children increases family stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has demonstrated that son preference has a serious impact on the survival and well-being of female infants and children in some parts of South and East Asia, but little is known about the consequences of son preference in later childhood and adolescence. We compare children's growth trajectories in height over childhood and adolescence in China, where the level of son preference is relatively high, and the Philippines, where it is relatively low. Children's height reflects long-term nutritional status and exposure to infectious diseases, both influenced by household decision-making and, presumably, by a preference for sons. Using data from two high-quality longitudinal studies and multilevel growth models, we find that male children in China show an additional height advantage relative to their female counterparts, when compared to the sex difference in growth trajectories in the Philippines. Further analysis reveals that the additional advantage of males in China is stronger in rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study assesses the effects of socio-economic conditions and the interaction between son preference and China's one-child family planning policy on the use of maternal health care services and their effects on infant mortality in rural China, using nationally representative data from the 2001 National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Survey. The results show that while the use of maternal health care services has continued to increase over time, large gaps still exist in the use of these services and in infant survival by mother's education, community income, and parity. Further improvements in the reproductive health of all women and in infant survival will require effective reduction of the obstacles to the use of maternal health care among those women in rural China who are less educated, poor, and of higher parity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a sample of couples drawn from the three provinces of Guangdong, Shandong, and Shaanxi, we investigated whether couples' increasing freedom to choose whom to marry influenced the timing of first birth in rural China during the four decades before the 1990s. The shortening of first-birth intervals in the period is found to be associated with the shift from arranged to free-choice marriages. The association is attributed largely to increased intimacy and coital frequency after marriage together with postponement of age at first marriage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study presented here is an exploration of the implications of patterns of sexual behaviour for the spread of HIV in China, using a bio-behavioural macrosimulation model. To reflect the uncertainty surrounding key parameters, analyses of varied scenarios are used to show a range of possible outcomes consistent with variations in selected biological and behavioural inputs. The latter are estimated from a nationwide survey of sexual behaviour recently conducted in China, a country with an emerging HIV/AIDS epidemic, where it is feared that HIV/AIDS will spread to the general population via heterosexual transmission. The results highlight the primacy of the levels and distribution of sexual activity in the population. They offer some guidelines for understanding and interpreting the potential implications of current and prospective changes in sexual behaviour for the spread of HIV/AIDS in the world's largest population, and also highlight the need to collect better data on sexual behaviour for the estimation of key model inputs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We compare the age and sex structure of China's 2000 population census to an estimate of that structure derived from a projection from the 1990 census. Based on China's own official estimates of demographic change, our intercensal analysis indicates a shortfall in enumeration of more than a quarter of all children under age 5 and an eighth of those between 5 and 9, a total of nearly 37 million children missing in the 2000 census. We show that the shortfall is primarily due to underreporting of children in the census. Sex differences in child underreporting were fairly minor. Child underreporting in China is not unprecedented, but child underreporting rates in 2000 were about triple those of previous censuses. We attribute the increase primarily to policy changes beginning in the early 1990s that held officials at all jurisdictional levels personally responsible for enforcing birth quotas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Statistical analysis of a large and unique longitudinal data-set demonstrates that childbearing after age 35 or 40 is associated with survival and healthy survival among very old Chinese women and men. The association is stronger for women than for men. The estimates are adjusted for a variety of confounding factors: demographic characteristics, family support, social connections, health practices, and health conditions. Further analysis based on an extension of the Fixed-Attributes Dynamics method shows that late childbearing is positively associated with long-term survival and healthy survival from ages 80-85 to 90-95 and 100-105. This association exists among oldest-old women and men, but, again, the effects are substantially stronger for women than for men. We discuss four possible factors that may explain why late childbearing affects healthy longevity at advanced ages: (1) social factors; (2) biological changes caused by late pregnancy and delivery; (3) genetic and other biological characteristics; and (4) selection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use data from the nationally representative 1997 Demographic and Reproductive Health Survey to examine use of maternity services in rural China. The data indicate that roughly 60 per cent of women had at least one prenatal visit, while 40 per cent had a professionally assisted birth over the period 1 988-97. Despite China's shift from a more socialist to a more privatized health care system, use of maternity services increased over this period. These increases are consistent with the push toward integration of reproductive health into family planning that emerged after the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development and the 1995 Fourth World Women's Conference held in Beijing. At the same time, we find indirect evidence that the target-based population policy may well have exerted downward pressure on use of maternity services; differences by parity are marked and multilevel models predicting use of maternity services indicate underdispersion at the individual level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sex preferences for children are contingent on institutional and economic contexts, including family system. While the patrilineal joint family system of the Han Chinese tends to devalue daughters, the family systems of many of China's southern minorities are conducive to female autonomy and more equal sex preferences, Li Of Hainan Island provide an example. We examined household registers and surveyed women in a relatively isolated highland township inhabited by the Meifu, a Li sub-group. The Meifu depend largely on swidden agriculture, permit considerable sexual freedom to adolescent females, and, as expected, have more equal sex ratios among their children than other Hainan populations. There was a tendency for a preference for males in the one hamlet in the community with an exceptional endowment of irrigated land, suggesting that sex preferences are sensitive to local economic circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sterilization is the most prevalent method of contraception in China. Approximately half of all women of reproductive age report that they or their husbands are sterilized. Using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey we describe patterns of sterilization in eight Chinese provinces. With a discrete-time event history model we investigate the link between characteristics of local birth planning policy and the risk of sterilization. After controlling for parity, the risk of sterilization is highest in communities where birth planning policy is least strong as measured by exceptions to the one-child policy. These results suggest that couples with more flexibility in family building may have less control over contraceptive method use. Other factors affecting the risk of sterilization are a woman's age, parity, and whether or not she has a son. Our results emphasize the importance of taking into account multiple dimensions of reproductive behaviour when assessing one-child policy changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This analysis uses data from an intensive village study to investigate the impacts of institutional reforms on marriage in rural China. The study finds that age at marriage has been declining significantly both for men and women. The 'exchange marriage' and the 'mercenary marriage' have re-emerged. An increasing proportion of marriages occur between men and women in nearby villages, though there is no significant increase in village endogamy. Both bride price and dowry have increased significantly, and the ratio of value of dowry to bride price has undergone a dramatic equalization. The young, including young women, have much more decision making power regarding their marriages. Changes in marriage are the consequences of both change in the socio-economic environment brought about by deliberate rural reforms, and strategic or tactical responses of rural Chinese to the rapidly changing context in which they live and work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses data from the 1990 Census of China for Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region to examine phenomena that, to date, have been examined primarily at the national level: fertility and sex ratios at birth of women who already have at least one surviving child. Comparing data for Uighurs, Kazakhs, Hui, and Han, it finds enormous differences in fertility between the nationalities in the presence of high levels of fertility control. Also, for all four nationalities the extent of fertility control is dependent on the sex of surviving children. Women who had no previous sons, or who had many daughters, were likely to continue to try to have children even at ages and parities past which they would normally have stopped childbearing. Finally, disproportionately feminine sex ratios at birth are found for couples who have had several sons and no daughters. Hence, researchers interested in the question of unusual sex ratios at birth in China need to account for `missing boys' as well as `missing girls' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the ramifications of China's imminent population ageing at the family and kinship level - by simulating China's evolving family and kinship structure. Results from such simulations suggest that the burden of supporting old parents is likely to increase tremendously, quadrupling for urban families and doubling for rural families by the year 2030, when Chinas baby-boomers will enter their old age. Increases of such magnitudes suggest that family alone is unlikely to be able to meet the demands of the rapidly increasing elderly population. Public assistance, especially to rural families, is urgently needed to ensure that the family will not be overstrained by the burden of old age support. The results of this study also point out the potential of tapping the resources among the elderly population to compensate for the loss in support from children. Given their improved health status, the young elderly could provide substantial assistance in caring for the older and more frail elderly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In northern Taiwan (as in many other places in South China) two Chinese populations with distinct traditions lived side by side. In one group, the Hokkien, women bound their feet and never worked in the fields; in the other, the Hakka, they did not bind their feet and worked in the fields as men did. Data drawn from household registers for the period 1905-1980 are used to test two hypotheses which argued that women's participation in productive labour reduced their fertility. Both are rejected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The large multi-generation household has been a popular subject in the study of Chinese social history. This study compares outcomes of computer micro-simulation with results from genealogical research, and is particularly concentrated on the potential pattern of multi-generation co-residence in the past. On the basis of such a comparison, questions concerning the impact of demographic conditions on the formation and composition of large multi-generation households, the change in lifetime residential experiences of each individual, and the use of genealogical records in the study of Chinese social demographic history are also examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's one-per-hundred population survey, conducted in mid-1987, provides the first nation-level data with which to study recent fertility change in China. Using a recently developed extension of the own-children' method of fertility estimation, period parity progression ratios are computed from the survey data. Comparison with similar statistics computed from the 1982 one-per-thousand fertility survey provides a rigorous check on the quality of the results. The level of fertility so measured rose by 13 per cent between 1985 and 1987, compared with an increase of eight per cent in conventional total fertility ratios. Nearly 90 per cent of the increase was due to rising levels of progression from first to second birth. There can be little doubt that this, in turn, was due to a relaxation in the one-child family policy. Overall levels of progression to births of higher orders have been declining since 1982, but the evidence suggests that this is so only because of stringent government efforts to control births of third and higher orders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the impact of population planning programmes and socio-economic change in the People's Republic of China. Provincial fertility and socio-economic data like urbanization, total industrial and agricultural output, and life expectancy at birth by sex are used to assess the relative influence of population planning programmes and socio-economic change. "Induced fertility transition" in China since the early 1970s deserves to be acclaimed as an outstanding success in government-initiated and government-directed family planning activities, it should not be viewed separately from socio-economic change, both in the past and the present. One salient aspect of recent socio-economic change is the markedly higher life expectancy at birth. The correlations between life expectancy at birth and natural increase were larger for females than for males. Population planning, rather than family planning, correctly epitomizes its rationale, objectives, and operations. The urgency and importance of China's population planning programmes have been steadily and systematically reflected in the increasingly more stringent norms for childbearing and their stricter enforcement. The "one child per couple" decision of 1979 and the concurrent introduction of rewards for compliance are the leading aspects of the programmes.

The article focuses on the fertility decline in one rural commune of Sichuan Sheng Province, China, based on a sample survey of commune households. Also, it gives various causes for the rapid fertility decline in the rural China. The famine of 1959-61, and the fertility translation of the 1970s were two major events that marked the recent demographic history of the commune and rural China as a whole. A rapid mortality decline in the 1950s was a direct result of government-sponsored programmes to limit births, which in Sichuan have relied heavily on sterilization. About one-quarter of the decline in rural total fertility is attributable to the policy of promoting later marriage. The article focuses on the role of government policies and effect of socio-economic developments on the fertility decline. Socio-economic development is also reflected in women's marriage ages, which have risen. Part of the rise can be attributed to the developmental factors that have influenced marriage ages in other Asian societies, including education and the changing roles of women, but in recent years the rise has been due to direct government regulation of age at marriage.

In this article, an inventory of the population statistics of China that have been available since 1953 is presented, including the results of the 1953 Census of Population, population data and vital rates in the 1950s reported by official Chinese sources, and recent demographic information obtained by scholars who visited China. Major studies of the population made in recent years by members of various research institutions are summarized. A new estimate of the current demographic situation of China, on the basis of available information is made, presenting the population estimates and vital rates for the period 1953-1978 derived from a series of assumed trends in fertility and mortality during the past 25 years. The first nationwide census of population ever conducted on the mainland of China by modern methods took place in 1953-54 and some of the census results were released in 1954. In 1957, the State Statistical Bureau published annual population totals for the years 1949 to 1956, based on data from population registration and estimates.

The Dixon model, which assesses the factors responsible for a rise in marriage age, has been applied to a number of Hong Kong women, aged from 20 to 24 in 1973, who were interviewed in depth. Delayed marriage can make an important contribution to the policies of many Asian nations which are aimed at curtailing population growth. Assuming low rat of illegitimacy, delayed marriage will reduce period birthrates and extend the length of generations. A discussion of the factors contributing to delayed marriage must turn on whether or not it enhances women's social standing. Practically speaking, policies will be most effective provided they are perceived as elevating the status of those who adopt them. The model to be applied to Hong Kong was developed. by Ruth Dixon. She isolated three sets of factors to explain age of marriage crossculturally: the availability of mates, and the feasibility and the desirability of marriage. 98 per cent of the Hong Kong population is Chinese, and the lease held by the United Kingdom on the Hong Kong New Territories will expire in 1997. This leads many observers to expect that the colony itself will revert to China at around that time.

From mortality levels in 1949 similar to those in the United States during the nineteenth century, China claims to have reduced mortality to levels comparable to those in the United States 30 years ago. The data used in this study come from Chinese medical research journals, which are published in Chinese and English for both the Chinese and international medical communities. It may be argued that the vital statistics in such publications are presented for propaganda purposes specifically by boosting morale or setting examples. If the health conditions of town dwellers had improved more rapidly than those of the rural populace, this would tend to bias reporting because hospitals and public health organizations located in urban areas contribute more information than rural areas, despite overall improvement in data collecting. With such a history of high mortality, the 1953 census statistics and concurrent large-scale vital registration surveys present an incredibly low death rate of 17 per thousand. Historically, infant mortality has been more affected by economic and political disruptions in the environment than has adult mortality. Infant mortality, always high in China, rose during the war years to 200 per thousand live births in some rural districts.

The article describes institutionalized motivation for family planning in China. Chinese developmental model has adopted historically unique models. The government has experimented with three approaches to modernization. The earliest Soviet model featured investment in urban-based heavy industry and rapid social mobility for the middle strata was stressed. In the second, a transitional approach, China's "New Economic Plan" allowed greater freedom to market forces, encouraging profit from agricultural investment and trade. During these years Chinese citizens were encouraged to reduce fertility to gain economic rewards, to win higher social positions, and to avoid political pressure. This was preceded and succeeded by a third, so-called Maoist economic plan in late 1957-59 and again from 1966 to the present. The Maoist approach aims at halting the urbanization process and the partial industrialization of rural areas. Income differentials by geographical location, occupation and social rank are narrowed. The political values for leaders stress service to the community without material incentives. The schools and mass media curb competition for individual achievement and upward mobility.

Since 1949 marital postponement has been extensively discussed in China. Furthermore, unlike some other means of fertility control, marital postponement has been received with the fewest misgivings. Not only was encouragement to delay marriage made part and parcel of social and family reform long before the decision to promote planned reproduction in China, but it has also become an integral component of the efforts to arrest the nation's demographic momentum since the 1950's. Moreover, following an interlude of quiet dissemination of contraceptive advice and devices from 1959 to 1962, exhortations to marry later constituted the prologue to a continuing phase of family planning activities in China. Yet, details of this Chinese discussion of marital postponement have been neither fully described nor analysed, outside China. The article presents a comprehensive account of the discussion of marital postponement in China during the birth-control campaign of the last two decades and also discusses its implications for the current fertility controversy outside of China.

This article focuses on sterilization, oral contraception, and population control in China. In the early spring of 1962 China resumed public discussions and propaganda in favour of late marriage. Events since then have made it abundantly clear that this open advocacy of marriage postponement constituted but a prologue to a new phase of fertility control activities. This bland re-opening of the birth control issue may well have been due to domestic considerations. In any case, the recent promotion of late marriage was initially not explicitly linked to the question of fertility control; its keynote was: "it is not good to get married and give birth to a child too early in life." Thus, the recent campaign to encourage late marriage with its accompanying emphasis upon personal well-being and the welfare of mothers and children may have been deliberately tactful. It reiterated the official position on the need for birth control, and simultaneously and simply laid the basis for the re-activation of the fertility control activities that were to come shortly.

Recent difficulties in the agricultural sector have accentuated the vital problem of China's huge population. With a population estimated to be over 700 millions, which is thought to be increasing by 15 millions annually, China has almost one-quarter of the world's total population. After a lapse of some four years China launched her second major birth control campaign during 1962. Such a decision reflected the conflict between the traditional Communist position, and the neo-Malthusian stand taken in 1957 by social activist Ma Yin-chu with his New Theory of Population. It is generally claimed that China's population is likely to reach 1,000 millions by 1980 or 1985, and about 1,200 millions by the year 2000 A.D. In most countries, which have experienced modernization, considerable increases in population have been absorbed, for a decline in mortality rates has been matched by a subsequent decline in fertility rates within a manageable period. China's need is for a far more immediate lowering of fertility rates. The alternative is that population growth will threaten the means of subsistence increasingly. Success in handling the population problem is seen by some as fundamental to the future of stable government, and yet China has not achieved any breakthrough in terms of population control, and, moreover, China's second major birth control campaign appears to have lapsed as did the earlier campaign.

The article presents a minature of Chinese population. Szechwan, the largest and most populous of the provinces in China proper, constitutes in its greater part a natural geographic region usually called the Red Basin. Except along the important rivers, its terrain varies from hilly to mountiinous, though the region is nonetheless intensively cultivated by means of elaborate terracing and irrigation devices. Sansheng hsiang, lies about six miles from Chengtu in the hills which rim the plain. A hsiang is an administrative sub-division of the hsien (county), and resembles the American township. In Szechwan it always contains at least one, and usually only one, market town. Most of Szechwan is peculiar for its lack of villages, if by the term is meant a large number of dwellings grouped together separate from the land tilled. Szechwanese farmers, as distinct from those in other parts of China proper, live in scattered households and household clusters. The population of the Chengtu area was radically altered in size and composition by the catastrophic events of the period between the Ming and Ch'ing dynasties.

Surveying the literature available in European languages, the author concludes that all past Chinese population data are inaccurate, and probably very markedly so, though there is no means at present of estimating the degree of error. This inaccuracy is attributed to a number of factors. At no time did the Government appear to realize the value of accurate population data as such, and the data actually collected have been very largely the by-products of inquiries with more immediately administrative aims. The geographical area covered by the `censuses' has varied considerably over time, and so also, either by intention or through defective organization, have the classes of the population included. Antagonism from the public has been common, arising partly from superstition but also from the association between the `censuses' and military and labour conscription and taxation. With the exception of the recent, local (hsien) censuses, uniform schedules, instructions and other census procedures have not been used. The author considers the possibilities of interpreting the population data now available for China and suggests means of collecting more accurate statistics in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]