Interventions to Balance Sex Ratio at Birth in Rural China

Almost all parents have preference to the number and sex of children, somebody like boy more and somebody like girl more. The ideal sex composition of children to most couples in China is to have one boy and one girl (Zheng, 2004), which was also true in China for the last two thousand years. If there were no limit to number of children, and if a couple had very strong sex preference of children, they would give birth one after another until they achieve the ideal sex structure of their children. However, there is hardly such a case in modern days since the higher cost of an “extra” child is not affordable to most families, the costs include economic, social, opportunity, and political. A couple under the double pressure of strong sex preference and limited number of children affordable may choose