ABSTRACT
China’s fertility limitation policies consist of a set of regulations that encourage late marriage and childbearing and limit couples to one or two children. The implementation of the one-child policy was highly effective in big cities. For example, in 1980, in Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin, over 80% of parents agreed only to have one child and, therefore, were honoured with a “single-child certificate” by the government. Singletons and children with just one sibling get much more heavily concentrated parental attention, expectations and investment than children who must share family resources with many siblings. Though some studies groups conducted during the first decade of China’s one-child policy focused on problems with singleton status, none of these studies found large statistical significance between singletons and non-singletons. Some researchers have found sex selective abortions, female infanticide and child abandonment, especially in rural areas.
