Gender Imbalance and Consequences for Marriage Market in China. A Geographic Family Planning Policy Analysis

Yang Lu, Centre Francais sur la Population et le Developpement (CEPED)

In China, traditional culture son preference combined with modern sex selection technology and the one-child policy, have resulted of low fertility rate. They are the direct or indirect causes of the phenomena of gender imbalance at the birth which has appeared since the 1980s. Sex ratio at the birth has then became an important variable for calculating the function of the number of desired children. The individual wish is different with society's wish, in this paper I try to find out an “evolutionary stable strategy”, in order to find out a balance between the individual interest and society's interest. Based on the different strategies, a population projection is made, in order to explore the consequence of the sex imbalance at the birth for marriage market in future.