Download This PaperWhere have All the Children Gone? An Empirical Study of Child Abandonment and Abduction in China
74 Pages Posted: 18 Dec 2019 Last revised: 1 Mar 2021
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Where have All the Children Gone? An Empirical Study of Child Abandonment and Abduction in China
Where Have All the Children Gone? An Empirical Study of Child Abandonment and Abduction in China
Date Written: December 1, 2019
Abstract
In the past 40 years, a large number of children have been abandoned by their families or have been 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.
Keywords: One-Child Policy, Child Abandonment, Child Abduction, Son-Preference Bias
JEL Classification: J13, K42
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation