What is the good bachelor crisis in 2020?

In 2020, there may be a bachelor crisis in China: tens of millions of single men.

The imbalance of sex ratio at birth is the result of the joint action of sex preference, birth restriction and fetal sex identification, and these three factors are indispensable.

Sister Zhao in Zhao County, Hebei Province is sad. Her 25-year-old son hasn't talked about his daughter-in-law, and a big stone has been on her mind. I kissed her once, and the woman asked for a bride price of 654.38+0.5 million, and the family could not get the money. Sister Zhao, 48, had no choice but to go to Beijing to do housework and help her son save money for a wife.

"Now the girl is too expensive, an opening is three catties. What's three Jin? 100 yuan bills should be weighed three Jin! You have to buy a car as soon as it rings, let alone a house. What is missing? ! "Zhao Dajie said.

According to the reporter of the First Financial Client, in recent years, the bride price in rural areas in Hebei and other places has risen rapidly, from less than100000 five years ago to150000 or even higher now.

Coupled with expensive bride price and other investments such as new houses, marrying a daughter-in-law often exhausts a family's savings for many years. For a relatively poor man, there is only one way-single. With the rise of bride price, more and more bachelor villages began to appear.

Behind the abnormally high bride price and bachelor village, it is a very difficult reality: the gender ratio in China has been seriously unbalanced, and there are tens of millions more marriageable men than women. Yao, a demographer and senior statistician, judged that the bachelor crisis may break out in an all-round way after 2020.

The gender ratio is seriously unbalanced.

According to the data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, at the end of 20 14, the male population in Chinese mainland was 700.79 million, 33.76 million more than the female population. After 80s, the male-female ratio of unmarried population is 136: 100, while after 70s, the male-female ratio is as high as 206: 100, which is seriously unbalanced.

Why is there such a deformed sex ratio imbalance? Generally speaking, there are two main reasons for the imbalance of sex ratio in a country and region: immigration and birth sex ratio imbalance. Because the proportion of migrants is very small, the fundamental reason for the imbalance of population sex ratio in China is the imbalance of birth sex ratio.

Under normal natural conditions, the sex ratio at birth is generally between103 and107. That is to say, for every 100 girls born, there are103 to107 boys. The sex ratio at birth in China was basically normal before1980s, and it was 107 in 1982, then it rose rapidly and reached11.3 in 2000. Although the sex ratio at birth has declined since 2008, it still hovers at a high level of around 1 17.

The National Health and Family Planning Commission said at the innovation seminar of the sex ratio of the birth population at the beginning of this year that the overall level of the sex ratio of the birth population in China is still high, and the consequences have already appeared, and the risks have further gathered and expanded.

In recent 20 years, the sex ratio at birth in China has been higher than 1 15, which is the most unbalanced country in the world.

Bachelor crisis

The direct consequence of the unbalanced sex ratio at birth is the bachelor crisis. According to the data of the National Bureau of Statistics, from 1980 to 20 14, 675 million people were born in China, and the average sex ratio in these 34 years was 1 14.7. According to the normal sex ratio, there are more than 30 million men.

Marriage Extrusion vividly shows the influence of the imbalance of sex ratio on marriage-the relatively stable and balanced marriage market becomes crowded because of tens of millions of redundant men, which makes redundant men squeezed out and forced to become bachelors.

Liu, a researcher at China Rural Governance Research Center of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, found in Henan, Hubei, Guizhou and other places that the bachelor's degree rate has gradually increased since the middle and late 1980s. In addition, bachelors are mostly concentrated in rural areas, and some poor mountainous areas even have bachelor villages.

Yao told the reporter of the First Financial Client that the imbalance of the sex ratio between men and women will lead to the increase of early marriage, engagement and marriage for sale, which will lead to the increase of social phenomena such as marriage dislocation, intergenerational competition and extramarital affairs, third-party interference, illegitimate birth, homosexuality, sexually transmitted diseases and sexual crimes, which will endanger social security.

Li Shuzhuo, director of the Institute of Population and Development of Xi Jiao Tong University, published a book entitled "The imbalance of sex ratio and social order in China: a survey of 100 villages and its main findings" on 20 10, which confirmed that the existence of a large number of divorced young people objectively stimulated criminal acts such as buying marriage, cheating marriage and buying and selling women. Among the 364 villages surveyed, about 30% have cheated marriage.

20 1 14 One day in June, dozens of vietnamese brides fled in Handan, Hebei. After investigation, the police confirmed that this was a well-planned transnational marriage fraud case. Behind every bride who runs away from home is a family that is heartbroken by her son's marriage. This is just one of more and more cases of cheating marriage in recent years.

The risks are far more than that. Li Shuzhuo, who has long studied the problem of sex ratio imbalance, warned that the risk of sex ratio imbalance will be aggregated, amplified and spread through some programs, which may make the existing social risks more complicated and diversified. At present, our understanding of this point is still very inadequate.

Why does the balance tilt?

The risk brought by the imbalance of sex ratio is enormous. How should China respond? To find a solution, we must first go back to the original point and see what causes the gender balance of the population, which was relatively balanced and stable, to be seriously tilted.

At the seminar on the innovation of the governance system of the sex ratio at birth held at the beginning of this year, many experts pointed out that the main culprit of the high sex ratio at birth is gender inequality, the backward concept of fertility among the masses, and the serious preference for sons over daughters.

Demographer Huang Hehe disagrees with this view. They believe that the imbalance of sex ratio at birth is the result of three factors: sex preference, birth restriction and fetal sex identification. These three factors are indispensable; If any of these factors are removed, there will be no imbalance between men and women.

"The concept of son preference has always existed in China and some other countries and regions in the world, but the ratio of male to female births in China has seriously deviated from the normal level in recent decades, which is higher than that in all other countries and regions. The strict family planning policy is hard to blame. " Huang said:

According to the fifth population census in 2000, the sex ratio at birth in that year was 1 16.9, in which the sex ratio at birth of the first child was 107. 12, and the second child soared to 15 1.92. It can be seen from this set of data that the sex ratio at birth of the first child is basically normal, and more female fetuses are selectively aborted in the later period, thus pushing up the sex ratio at birth.

If there is only gender preference, parents can achieve the goal of gender selection by having more children. However, when gender preference, birth restriction and fetal sex identification are all available, it is almost inevitable that the sex ratio at birth is abnormally high.

According to the data of census and regional classification of birth policy, in 2000, the sex ratio of the population born in the area where "one and a half children" policy was implemented in China was as high as 124.7, which was 15.7 percentage points higher than that under the two-child policy. This fully shows the strong influence of birth policy restrictions on the sex ratio at birth. Most rural areas in China implement the policy of "one child and a half". If the first child is a daughter, the policy allows for a second child. Some couples hope to have another boy after giving birth to their daughter. They will identify the sex of the fetus after they are pregnant with a second child; If it is a boy, it will be born; If it is a girl, she voluntarily reported it and aborted on the grounds of unintended pregnancy. The family planning policy forces people to realize their desire for boys by preventing some girls from being born.

Women who are no longer "missing"

The Missing Woman was first proposed by Amartya Sen, a Nobel laureate in economics, in the 1990s. It has been used to refer to the female group who failed to come into this world because of human intervention, or died earlier because of gender preference. According to Amartya Sen's estimation, about 6,543.8+billion women in the world are missing because of sex selection, among which China and India are the hardest hit areas.

Every year, the Health Planning Commission, in conjunction with relevant ministries and commissions, launches a massive campaign against "two evils" (non-medical fetal sex identification and artificial sex selection to terminate pregnancy), trying to prevent those who try to choose sex from achieving their goals through fetal sex identification.

A reporter from the First Financial Client once found in a rural area in northern Jiangsu that although many hospitals are afraid of punishment, they dare not publicly identify the sex of the fetus, but if they are acquaintances, it is very common to do a B-ultrasound sex identification in private.

As for the selective artificial termination of pregnancy, it is more difficult to supervise. No pregnant woman who intends to abort a female fetus will take the initiative to tell the doctor her real purpose. Because termination of pregnancy is a recognized treatment measure after super-birth under the family planning policy, pregnant women can successfully abort as long as they tell the doctor that the child in their belly is not the first child.

More importantly, the awareness of reverence for fetal life has not been popularized. For many people, there is no great guilt about aborting a fetus, not to mention the "reasonable need" of sex selection.

According to the statistics of China Health Yearbook over the years, from 197 1 to 20 12, the total number of induced abortions in China was 270 million. If you add a considerable number of drug abortions, the total number of induced abortions is amazing.

In view of the above three factors that lead to the imbalance of sex ratio at birth, Liang Jianzhang said that although the concept of son preference has faded, it will still exist for a long time; Prohibition of fetal sex identification technology cannot be completely effective. Therefore, the most effective way to restore the male-female ratio to normal is to completely cancel the birth restriction policy.

Mu Guangzong, a professor of demography in Peking University, believes that to eliminate the concept of son preference, it is necessary to rebuild the fertility culture, which is a huge project and difficult to accomplish overnight. However, the sex ratio is seriously unbalanced and the fertility rate is extremely low, which needs to be changed urgently. He believes that the most feasible and effective countermeasure is to let go of birth restrictions.

In the view of demographer He Yafu, legislation to protect the right to life of fetus is the fundamental way to solve the imbalance of sex ratio. In China, abortion is very common for most people, because the fetus is not respected as an individual with the right to life. However, in specific laws and regulations, there are many contradictory provisions for the fetus. For example, the General Principles of the Civil Law stipulates that a citizen's capacity for rights begins at birth and ends at death. The unborn fetus has no civil rights. The criminal law stipulates that "the death penalty is not applicable to pregnant women at trial", and the inheritance law clearly stipulates that unborn fetuses have the right to inherit property.

The sex ratio at birth is seriously unbalanced. If it is not changed, it will bring shame to China. This is a systematic project, which requires the active participation of the government, relevant organizations and every citizen.