Abstract
It has long been recognised that family size tends to decrease in cities or urban areas earlier and more widely than it does in the countryside. Demographers often describe ‘urbanisation’ as a major factor in fertility decline, but that overall term covers a wide range of social and economic processes which may or may not affect the choice of individuals about the number of children to have. Definitions of the word ‘urban’ are not easy, and in China the difficulties are compounded by the existence of the overlapping category of suburban communes, which are generally grouped administratively within the sphere of cities and towns. Such communes are primarily agricultural but they are influenced by their proximity to a town and tend, in their fertility patterns, to reflect some of that influence, exhibiting rates which are between those of the truly urban areas, and those of the countryside. They are included in this chapter both because they thus exhibit some of the earlier changes in fertility seen in the towns, and because Chinese statistics for urban areas generally include suburban communes. The Chinese define an area as urban if it has a population of more than 2000 at least one half of which is working in non-agricultural pursuits.1 (See also H. Yuan Tien’s discussion of this definition in this volume.) It is this definition which will be used here.
I should like to thank the Department of Demography, The Australian National University, for the Visiting Fellowship which enabled me to do much of the work on which this chapter is based, and the International Planned Parenthood Federation for allowing me leave of absence to take up that fellowship.
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Notes and References
Norman Himes, Medical History of Contraception (Baltimore: Williams and Wikins 1936); and H. Yuan Tien, ‘Sterilisation, Oral contraception and Population control in China’, Population Studies, vol. 27(3), 1965.
Olga Lang, Chinese Family and Society (Yale: Yale University Press, 1946).
Ibid.
Chen Da, ‘Population in Modern China’, American Journal of Sociology, 52 (1) part 2 (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1946).
Ibid.
Pi-chao Chen, ‘The Politics of Population in Communist China’, PhD thesis, 1966.
Madeline Gray, Margaret Sanger (New York: Marek, 1979).
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Zhao Baoku, ‘Sociology and Population Studies in China’, paper presented at the University of Texas, September 1982.
Elisabeth Croll, the Politics of Marriage in Contemporary China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
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Ibid.
H. Yuan Tien, China’s Population Struggle (Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1973).
Pi-chao Chen, ‘The Politics of Population’, 1966.
Quoted in H. Yuan Tien, China’s Population Struggle, 1973.
Delia Davin, Woman-work: Women and the Party in Revolutionary China (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976).
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Ibid.
See for example, Jan Myrdal, Report from a Chinese Village (London: Heinemann, 1965); and William Hinton, ‘Fanshen’ Monthly Review Press, 1966.
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See, for example, Penny Kane, ‘Population Planning in China’ in T. S. Epstein and D. Jackson, The Feasibility of Fertility Planning (London: Pergamon, 1977).
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Ibid.
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Ibid.
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Anhui University, ‘A Survey on Single-child Families’, 1981.
Ibid.
Lyle, ‘Planned Birth in Tianjin’, 1980.
Croll, The Politics of Marriage, 1981.
Qiao Xinjian, ‘Possible Obstacles to the Realisation of the One-child Family’, extended essay, David Owen Centre for Population Growth Studies, July 1982.
Croll, ‘The Chinese Household’, 1980.
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Penny Kane, personal observations: and Sun Jingzhi and Li Muzhen, ‘A Discussion of the Ways to Solve Beijing’s Population Question’ in Symposium of Chinese Population Science (Beijing: China Academic Publications, 1981).
Qiao Xinjian, ‘Possible Obstacles’, 1982.
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Penny Kane, ‘China: New Focus on Welfare’, People, vol. 9, no. 3, 1982.
Croll, ‘The Chinese Household’, 1980.
Goodstadt, ‘China’s One-child Family’, 1982.
Penny Kane, personal observations, 1982.
Penny Kane, personal observations, 1982.
Penny Kane, personal observations, 1982.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Penny Kane, personal observations, 1982.
Ibid.
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© 1985 Elisabeth Croll, Delia Davin and Penny Kane
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Kane, P. (1985). The Single-child Family Policy in the Cities. In: Croll, E., Davin, D., Kane, P. (eds) China’s One-Child Family Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17900-8_3
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