China Offers Aid to Parents of Girls In Efforts to Stem Sex Imbalance
One of the major side effects of China’s one-child policy has been the widespread use of sex-selective abortions by couples who want to have male children. As a result, China has one of the most unbalanced sex ratios in the world and in the next couple decades could wind up with tens of millions more adult males than adult females of marrying age.
In an effort to rein in that problem, Knight Ridder reports that China is offering financial aid and support to families who have one or more daughters. Knight Ridder quotes Fujian province official Bai Pian as saying of the incentive plan,
According to tradition, most parents after having two daughters still want to have a boy. But the government wants them to stop. So that’s why it started the ‘Caring for Girls’ action plan.
The plan offers free education all the way through college for girls in such families as well as direct support, such as financial aid to help build a house or seed money to start a business.
Source:
China encouraging parents of girls. Tim Johnson, Knight Ridder Newspapers, July 8, 2004.
The China Offers Aid to Parents of Girls In Efforts to Stem Sex Imbalance by Brian Carnell, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Tags: China