Where Have All the Children Gone? An Empirical Study of Child Abandonment and Abduction in China / Xiaojia Bao, Sebastian Galiani, Kai Li, Cheryl Long.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bao, Xiaojia.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Galiani, Sebastian.

Li, Kai.

Long, Cheryl.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w26492.

NBER working paper series no. w26492

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2019.

Summary:

In the past 40 years, a large number of children have been abandoned or abducted in China. We argue that the implementation of the one-child policy has significantly increased both child abandonment and child abduction and that, furthermore, the cultural preference for sons in China has shaped unique gender-based patterns whereby a majority of the children who are abandoned are girls and a majority of the children who are abducted are boys. We provide empirical evidence for the following findings: (1) Stricter one-child policy implementation leads to more child abandonment locally and more child abduction in neighboring regions; (2) A stronger son-preference bias in a given region intensifies both the local effects and spatial spillover effects of the region's one-child policy on child abandonment and abduction; and (3) With the gradual relaxation of the one-child policy after 2002, both child abandonment and child abduction have dropped significantly. This paper is the first to provide empirical evidence on the unintended consequences of the one-child policy in terms of child trafficking in China.

Notes:

Print version record

November 2019.