Abstract
As the most populated country in the world, China grows by about 14 million people a year. The population of China was about 1.3 billion in 2002. In the year of 1979, the Chinese government implemented the One-Child police. As a result, fertility declined rapidly in China, from an average of about 6 children per woman in 1970 to 1.8 in 2000. However, due to the strong preference of a son, the sex ratio at birth began to increase in the 1980s. The 2000 Population Census of China reports a total sex ratio at birth of 119.9. The normal range should be 103 to 107 around the world. Thus obviously the sex ratio at birth is out of balance in China. The question is why provinces vary in the sex ratio at birth. The explanation of the variation of the sex ratio at birth among Chinese provinces could be a combination of cultural effect and demographic effect, associated with fertility level and Han majority concentration respectively. The results of this thesis show that the percentage of Han population has a strong constantly positive relationship with a province's sex ratio at birth. In addition, the results reveal that when the fertility level is generally very low, the total fertility rate also has a positive relationship with the sex ratio at birth.
Gu, Yuan (2004). The sex ratio at birth in China in 2000: a provincial level analysis. Master's thesis, Texas A&M University. Available electronically from
https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /ETD -TAMU -2004 -THESIS -G78.