Lost and Found

Between 1979 and 2010 local leaders and rural families across China concealed the existence of millions of girls from government officials and the national census. The single child policy (1979–2015) was introduced in 1979, and the central government’s goal was to reduce population growth through strict birth control. Yet, at the same time, many rural parents had strong incentives not to comply with the birth control policy because under economic reforms in the 1980s and 1990s, larger families meant increased labor and income. However, most journalists and scholars reported that the combination of a strictly enforced central policy and a historical preference for sons had led to a stark gender imbalance, with an abnormally higher number of males being born than females. The result was an estimated 20 million “missing girls” in the population from 1980 to 2010. Most demographers have believed that this dearth of girls has been due to widespread sex-selective abortion and infanticide. Yet quantitative analysis of China census data and qualitative interviews with rural parents and local leaders suggest that at least half of the “missing girls” were hidden in China. This was due to two key factors. First was the discretion to implement central policy that street-level bureaucrats and local leaders have. There was mutual noncompliance between rural families and village leaders, such that rural parents did not immediately register additional children and local leaders underreported illegal births to higher authorities. Second is the increasing value of daughters and equal preference for sons and daughters over the last several decades.