WATERING THE NEIGHBOUR'S GARDEN: THE GROWING - CICRED

INTERVENTIONS TO BALANCE SEX RATIO AT BIRTH IN RURAL CHINA
comments and assumptions are somehow misleading the public (Bu,
2004). A website search in 2005 found that among 1,930,000 papers
and reports about sex ratio issues, only 14.8% mentioned “gender
equity” and 4.1% mentioned “women’s rights and interests,” revealing a
lack of gender perspective on SRB issues in China (Ci, 2006).
2.2. Economic Development
Research has shown that the relationship between sex ratio at birth
and economic development are mixed and complicated. Economic
development in a region is supposed to improve the ability of old-age
support by the elderly themselves and by family members in general,
and to balance the roles and functions of sons and daughters within a
family and, consequently, to improve the status of women. The need
for sons’ labour and economic support may also decline with
socioeconomic development. However, analysis at a provincial level in
1990 and in 2000, found that the imbalanced SRB is not correlated to
any economic factors (Guilmoto, 2005; Wang et al., 2005).
It is commonly agreed that economic development does not
automatically solve the problem of imbalanced SRB, but may play an
indirect positive or negative role in different period of time. Economic
development may affect son preference in different ways:
• A community with better economic development is able to
setup old age security and support system and local people do
not expect to depend only on sons for old-age care;
• A developed local economy increases employment in the region;
some labour intensive enterprises prefer to recruit young
women workers, since they work faster then men in some assembly
line, such as electrical products and garment, which increase
the proportion of rural women working for a salary, and
may lead to an improvement of women’s status inside and outside
the family, so that women no longer need to prove their
value by giving a son to the family;
• Families with higher income could afford foetus sexidentification
service which may lead to more frequent sexselective
abortions;
• Where private business is booming, a rich family desperately
needs a son to take over and carry on the family business under
the tradition that males inherit family properties.
Labour force migration is another social/demographic change that
could have a positive effect on the level of sex ratio at birth. Migration
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