* Thanks to Herbert Smith, William Lavely, Stevan Harrell and Samuel Preston for their valuable suggestions and constructive comments.

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11. Ciqixian (a pseudonym), formerly a county (xian), was recently redefined as a city district (shixiaqu) with the former county boundaries. Because of its former administrative status, Ciqixian has a mostly rural population. The district was selected with three other counties in Shandong and Hebei provinces for participation in the project “Introducing new contraceptives in rural China” (INCRC). For details about this project, see Smith et al. “Implementation of a demographic and contraceptive surveillance system”; and Merli, M. G., Smith, H. L., Hereward, M. and Qian, Zhenchao,“Demographic research in rural China: field observations from work in four counties in north China,” paper presented at the Population Association of America Annual Meeting, New Orleans, 1996.Google Scholar

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15.Luo, Sheng, “Reconstruction of life tables,” pp. 33–34Google Scholar; Wang, Changling, “Yinger chusheng siwang renshu bumennei hengxiang bijiao” (“A cross-sectional comparison of birth and infant deaths records collected by health stations”), Zhongguo weisheng tongji (China Health Statistics), No. 10 (1993), p. 29Google Scholar; Zhang, Qingdong, “Yangzhong xian yinger siwang loubao de kongzhi” (“The control of underreporting of infant deaths in Yangzhong county”), Zhongguo weisheng tongji, (China Health Statistics), No. 10 (1993), p. 22.Google Scholar

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19. See Feng, Guoping and Hao, Linna, “Zhongguo de ershiba ge difang jihua shengyu tiaoli zongshu” (“Summary of 28 Chinese birth planning regulations”), Renkou yanjiu (Population Research), No. 4 (1992), pp. 28–33Google Scholar. Out-of-plan (jihuawai) births are births not in conformity with family planning regulations. These are (a) early births, resulting from early marriages (zaohun zaoyu), i.e. marriages taking place at an earlier age than the legal minimum (20 for females and 22 for males) (see Fifth National People's Congress, “China's new marriage law,” Population and Development Review, Vol. 7 (1981), pp. 369–372), or out-of-wedlock births (feihun zaoyu), and (b) above quota (chaosheng) births, or births in excess of the individual or the village birth quota.Google Scholar

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23. Feng Guoping and Hao Linna, “Summary of 28 Chinese birth planning regulations”; Zeng, Yi, “Is the Chinese family planning program tightening up?” Population and Development Review, Vol. 15 (1989), pp. 333–37.Google Scholar

24.Greenhalgh, S., “Negotiating birth control in village China,” in Gilmartin, C., Hershatter, G., Rofel, L. and White, T. (eds.), Engendering China: Women, Culture and the State (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994); Greenhalgh, “The peasantization of population policy in Shaanxi.”Google Scholar

25.Freedman, R. and Guo, S., “Response of a traditional fishing community to China's family planning program: a case study,” International Family Planning Perspectives, Vol. 14 (1988), pp. 28–33Google Scholar; Wang, Huide, “Factors affecting the quality of birth statistics,” p. 58.Google Scholar

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27.Greenhalgh, et al., “Restraining population growth,” p. 376.Google Scholar

28. By 1991, 18 provinces had enforced this stated policy. See Feng Guoping and Hao Linna, “Summary of 28 Chinese birth planning regulations.”Google Scholar

29.Tu, Ping, “Contraceptive use patterns among young rural women in four counties of China,” paper presented at the conference on INCRC, Honolulu, 06 1993, p. 1.Google Scholar

30.Smith, H. L. and Tian, Linzhu, “Variation in sex ratios for first births in four counties: where does the variation begin?” paper presented at the conference on INCRC, Honolulu, 06 1993Google Scholar. The biologically normal sex ratios should be around 106 male births per 100 female birth plus or minus variability due to chance (see Johansson, and Nygren, , “The missing girls of China,” p. 35)Google Scholar. However, it should be noted that the sex ratio of Chinese births in the U.S. appears to be higher. James estimated a sex ratio for 1960–1982 births of Chinese origin in the U.S. of 107.1 (James, W. H., “The sex ratio of oriental births,” Annals of Human Biology, Vol. 12 (1985), pp. 485–87). Sex ratios significantly higher than 106 males per 100 female births are considered abnormal. As noted in footnote 7, elevated sex ratios at birth suggest underreporting of births, sex selective abortions, excess female infant mortality or all of these in some combination. There is no evidence of excess female mortality in Ciqixian, nor of its most direct cause, infanticide. Sex selective abortion and underreporting of female births are more plausible explanations of high sex ratio at birth. Yet, because ultrasound machines enabling detection of the sex in utero became available in Ciqixian only in the late 1980s, sex selective abortion may only partially explain Ciqixian's high sex ratios in the period 1981–1991.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31.Tu, Ping, “The sex ratio at birth in China: results from the 1990 census,” (Beijing: Institute of Population Research, Beijing University, 1992).Google Scholar

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34. The survey was conducted as the baseline for the INCRC project.Google Scholar

35. According to World Bank estimates, Japan recorded an IMR of 5 (per 1,000) in 1991, while Sweden, Finland and Singapore recorded IMRs around 6 (per 1,000) (see World Bank, World Development Report 1993: Investing in Health (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 1993))Google Scholar. It should be noted, however, that Japan systematically underreports infant mortality by recording early infant deaths as stillbirths (Coale, and Banister, , “Five decades,” pp. 466–67.Google Scholar

36.Ciqixian, qu, 1990 nian renkou pucha ziliao (Data from the 1990 Census of Population of Ciqixian) (Renkou pucha bangongshi, 1991).Google Scholar

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49.Lavely, , “Luoping county, Yunnan.”Google Scholar

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