Sex and the Chinese economy
between one-third and one-half of the increase in its trade surplus with other countries. The sex imbalance thus likely underpins an important source of tension between China and the US. Yet bilateral engagement has paid scant attention to this linkage.
As I show in a forthcoming research paper with Zhibo Tan and Xiaobo Zhang in the Journal of Development Economics, China’s unbalanced male-female ratio also contributes to unsafe workplace practices, leading to many preventable injuries and deaths.
A shortage of potential brides causes many parents with sons of marriageable age to work more and seek higherpaying but potentially dangerous jobs in sectors such as mining and construction, or jobs exposing them to hazardous materials and extreme heat or cold. Because people are more willing to accept such jobs, employers often invest less in workplace safety, which in turn increases workrelated injuries and mortality.
My co-authors and I found that accidental injuries and workplace deaths are significantly higher in areas with a more severe shortage of young women relative to men. And parents with sons of marriageable age account for a disproportionate share of the victims.
The sex-ratio imbalance can self-correct, but only slowly. Seeing parents with sons shouldering greater financial and physical burdens to help their sons avoid involuntary bachelorhood, many young couples may decide that having a daughter is as good or better. But the latest population census, which shows that the sex ratio at birth remains unbalanced, tells us that discrimination against girls persists.
As China worries about the country’s low population growth, it has progressively relaxed (but not yet ended) its family-planning policy.
Policymakers should now go further, and provide a significant financial reward to parents of baby girls. Such a measure would simultaneously hasten the correction of the sex-ratio imbalance at birth and arrest the decline in the overall birth rate.
A more balanced sex ratio will lessen the need for many Chinese households to sacrifice current consumption for higher savings, and foster safer working environments. It would also help to reduce trade tensions with other countries.