{"title":"Sex-selective abortions over the past four decades in China.","authors":"Li Mei, Quanbao Jiang","doi":"10.1186/s12963-025-00368-y","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>China now faces multiple challenging demographic and public policy problems that have emerged from four decades of sex-selective induced abortions. The sex-selective induced abortion of female fetuses has been under-examined quantitatively in China.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>Using annual data on the officially registered number of births, induced abortions, and SRB data, we estimate the annual number of sex-selective abortions and then estimated two related proportions over the past decades.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>The annual proportions and number of selective abortions rose in the 1980s with the strict family planning policy and the diffusion of sex identification technology, remained at a high level between 1990 and 2010, and then declined, totaling 30.04 million. The abortion of second-order female fetuses was the largest proportion of all sex-selective abortions but declined after 2000 partly due to the change in birth composition by order. Children's composition affected sex-selective practice. Village selective abortions accounted for the majority of all selective abortions but decreased markedly in 2010 with changes in birth composition by residence. The rural-urban comparison by order indicated that urban couples were not less likely to abort female fetuses than their rural counterparts. Sex-selective abortions still exhibit provincial differences.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>In China, the long-standing preference for sons, easy access to sex-selective technologies, and the spontaneous fertility decline have led to the continued practice of selectively aborting female fetuses, despite its prohibition. As a result, the imbalanced sex ratio may take years to normalize.</p>","PeriodicalId":51476,"journal":{"name":"Population Health Metrics","volume":"23 1","pages":"6"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2000,"publicationDate":"2025-02-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11846193/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Population Health Metrics","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s12963-025-00368-y","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"PUBLIC, ENVIRONMENTAL & OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Background: China now faces multiple challenging demographic and public policy problems that have emerged from four decades of sex-selective induced abortions. The sex-selective induced abortion of female fetuses has been under-examined quantitatively in China.
Methods: Using annual data on the officially registered number of births, induced abortions, and SRB data, we estimate the annual number of sex-selective abortions and then estimated two related proportions over the past decades.
Results: The annual proportions and number of selective abortions rose in the 1980s with the strict family planning policy and the diffusion of sex identification technology, remained at a high level between 1990 and 2010, and then declined, totaling 30.04 million. The abortion of second-order female fetuses was the largest proportion of all sex-selective abortions but declined after 2000 partly due to the change in birth composition by order. Children's composition affected sex-selective practice. Village selective abortions accounted for the majority of all selective abortions but decreased markedly in 2010 with changes in birth composition by residence. The rural-urban comparison by order indicated that urban couples were not less likely to abort female fetuses than their rural counterparts. Sex-selective abortions still exhibit provincial differences.
Conclusions: In China, the long-standing preference for sons, easy access to sex-selective technologies, and the spontaneous fertility decline have led to the continued practice of selectively aborting female fetuses, despite its prohibition. As a result, the imbalanced sex ratio may take years to normalize.
期刊介绍：
Population Health Metrics aims to advance the science of population health assessment, and welcomes papers relating to concepts, methods, ethics, applications, and summary measures of population health. The journal provides a unique platform for population health researchers to share their findings with the global community. We seek research that addresses the communication of population health measures and policy implications to stakeholders; this includes papers related to burden estimation and risk assessment, and research addressing population health across the full range of development. Population Health Metrics covers a broad range of topics encompassing health state measurement and valuation, summary measures of population health, descriptive epidemiology at the population level, burden of disease and injury analysis, disease and risk factor modeling for populations, and comparative assessment of risks to health at the population level. The journal is also interested in how to use and communicate indicators of population health to reduce disease burden, and the approaches for translating from indicators of population health to health-advancing actions. As a cross-cutting topic of importance, we are particularly interested in inequalities in population health and their measurement.
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