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Missing women of China refers to a shortfall in the female population of China resulting from cultural influences and government policy. The term "missing women" was coined by economist Amartya Sen, winner of the 1998 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, to describe a distorted population sex ratio in which the number of males far outweighs the number of females. According to 2012 figures from the National Bureau of Statistics, China’s sex ratio at birth (the number of boys born for every 100 girls) was as high as 118, while the sex ratio amongst the total population was approximately 105. The statistical data from China shows that the gap between male and female at birth is far larger than the biologically benchmark ratio (a sex ratio at birth of around 105 males per 100 females). == Background == Amartya Sen noticed that in China, a country with a traditional discrimination against women, rapid economic development went together with worsening female mortality. A significant decline in China’s female population happened after 1979, the year following implementation of economic and social reforms under Deng Xiaoping.〔 Sen concluded that there were three reasons why the environment for Chinese women had deteriorated, particularly since 1979:〔 *Compulsory measures—the one-child policy implemented in 1979，aimed to control the size of families,〔 and effectively meant a “one-child family” for most Chinese families—although there were some exceptions. (The policy was not enforced among the country's minority populations, and a number of exceptions among the majority Han populations.)〔 Given a strong son preference, these compulsory measures resulted in a neglect of girls and in some cases led to female infanticide. Female infant mortality soared in the early years after the reforms in 1979,〔 while some statistics imply that female infant mortality doubled from 1978 to 1984.〔 * A general crisis in health services arose after economic reform as previously funding for China’s extensive rural health care programs had largely come from agricultural production brigades and collectives.〔 While the economic reforms abolished these traditional structures, they were replaced by the household-responsibility system, which meant that agriculture remained concentrated within the family,〔 while availability of communal facilities in China’s extensive rural health care system were restricted.〔 In gender, the effect of a restriction in medical services was neutral, but in a Chinese rural society that looked up to men and down on women, the reduction in health care services had a significant impact on women and female children.〔 * The household-responsibility system involved a reduction of women’s involvement in paid agricultural labor.〔 At the same time, employment opportunities outside agriculture were generally scarce for women.〔 According to Sen’s cooperative conflicts approach (“who is doing productive work and who is contributing how much to the family's prosperity can be very influential”), the impact of this systematic change on women within the household was negative, because women had fewer bargaining powers in their families.〔 This reality motivated families to prefer boys over girls, which contributed to reduced care for female children.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Missing women of China」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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