Carrie Liu Currier

Investing in the Future: The One Child Policy and Reform

Since the One Child Policy was implemented in 1979, it has been examined closely for both its perceived developmental benefits and the negative effects it has had on women. To ensure compliance with the policy birth planning officials have used both incentives and punitive measures, with different results in urban and rural areas. In the urban sector, the policy has effectively reduced population growth, with suggestions that a lasting change has occurred in terms of attitudes on family size and the value of daughters. To illustrate these changes a cohort analysis of 292 women in Beijing is used, offering insight into changing family dynamics, sex ratios, and human capital investments as a result of the One Child Policy. This article then analyzes the current state of the policy and questions its continued implementation on the basis of the numerous exceptions allowed to the one child rule and the declining worker to retiree ratios that threaten the economic stability of Chinas aging population. The trends uncovered raise important questions about the role of the policy in Chinas long term development goals and suggest further reforms are needed.

Redefining ‘Labor’ in Beijing

Abstract Feminist analyses of political economy examine both the ‘position of women,’ documenting the roles women hold in the public and private spheres, and the ‘power of gender,’ or the social factors that push or pull women into such positions. This article addresses both of these issues by assessing the labor that a sample of women in Beijing perform inside and outside of the household and the factors causing them to adjust their roles in each. Womens perceptions on present and future employment opportunities have changed over time in response to the different stages of market reforms implemented in China. At times, the state has flexibilized and feminized womens labor by promoting policies that support the male breadwinner model and treat women as supplemental rather than primary workers. These gendered policies have not only contributed to the low value that women assign to their roles in both the public and private spheres, but have also created some unexpected economic gains for a middle cohort of women. In this article, I examine both the social and economic factors shaping womens labor decisions, using a cohort analysis of womens allocation of public and private sphere labor, perceptions of (in)equality, and attitudes toward the path and pace of reform to determine how women fare in the labor market under reform.