Abstract
There has been some research on factors affecting China’s rising sex ratio at birth (SRB), but the spatial dependence has been largely neglected. With China’s census and sample survey data and the dynamic spatial Durbin model; we analyzed the changes in SRB in China. We found that SRB and its influencing factors were spatially correlated at the provincial level. For direct effects; urbanization significantly reduced SRB in this region; while strict family planning policies increased SRB in the local region. For indirect effects; the increase in per capita Gross Domestic Product and urbanization led to an increase in the SRB of the neighboring regions through population mobility. By comparison; educational improvement in one region benefited the neighboring provinces and reduced SRB.
Highlights
Since the 1980s, the sex ratio at birth in China has continued to rise
The three models are intercorrelated, in Equation (1), if θ = 0, spatial Durbin model (SDM) could be simplified to spatial autoregressive model (SAR); if θ + ρβ = 0, SDM could be simplified to spatial error model (SEM) [50,79]
Referring to the test method in Belotti et al [80], the results show that SDM cannot be simplified to SAR (F = 2.35, p = 0.029) or SEM
Summary
Since the 1980s, the sex ratio at birth (the ratio of live male births to live female births, generally expressed as the number of live male births for every 100 live female births, hereafter SRB) in China has continued to rise. The long-term imbalance in the SRB has led to a large number of missing girls [5], exerted a far-reaching and profound effect on the long-term development of the Chinese population [6], the revival of sex industry and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases [7,8], economic behavior [9,10], and other aspects of demographic and socioeconomic development of China. Some studies have analyzed the causes of the imbalance in SRB in China from the perspective of economics [11,12,13], society [14,15], culture [13,16], and social policies [11,17], and reached many meaningful conclusions. Each administrative region has its own social, economic, cultural, and physical environmental characteristics, as well as local family planning policies [20], resulting in vast differences between them
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