An article in today's FT repeats the story that in some areas, there was an exception to the one-child-only rule: the Chinese are obsessed with having as many boys and as few girls as possible (quite why escapes me, unless they want them all to turn out gay or lonely), so if a couple's first child was a girl they were allowed to have another child.
I've read this before, so let's assume it is true for the sake of this discussion. The other article I read also pointed out that this sort of policy, in the absence of sex-selective abortions, does not lead to a relative increase in the number of boys.
Assuming a random arrival pattern of boys and girls:
- half of all couples will have a boy as their first child and that is the end of that.
- if the other half, who've had a girl, try again, half of them will go on to have a boy and half will go on to have another girl.
So out of 100 couples, we end up with:
- 50 having one boy = 50 boys
- 25 having one girl and one boy = 25 girls and 25 boys
- 25 having two girls = 50 girls
Tot those up and there are 75 girls and 75 boys. You can repeat the exercise and say that couples who have had two girls are allowed to try yet again, it doesn't make any difference, you always end up with the same number of each.
Wednesday 28 March 2012
China one-child puzzle
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6 comments:
This assumes (perhaps correctly, I don't know) that the Beverley Allitt treatment is not administered when a second girl is born.
TFb I've made a lot of assumptions, we don't even know if the "have another go" rule ever applied. It's a maths point, it's not about infanticide, rampant chauvinism and how cute little Chinese baby girls are etc.
From what little I know about the Chinese, I think that the object of the exercise is to have a son, not avoid a daughter, so with a strict one-child policy, you have 50% unhappy parents, whereas if you allow those who get a daughter first time to have another try, you get only 25% unhappy parents. That's a hell of a sight less unhappy people.
Because girls can't inherit in Chinese culture. When they marry and change their surname everything they have now belongs to the husband's family (culturally, not by law).
In China there is a lot of propaganda (government billboards etc.) trying to convince people that girls are your descendants too. This doesn't really matter because the one child policy only applies to the urban poor, who have nothing to pass on anyway.
B, J, yes, fair summary.
Jorge - given that it is a socialist state, do you not think that the law might be changeable?
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