Question

What was possible economic origin(s) of the infanticide in pre-industrial times? As a related practice, abortion is still prevalent in contemporary world. Taking China as an example, the abortion has led to a rising sex ratio from the early 1980s. Discuss the primary reason(s) behind the prevalence of abortion in post-1980 China.

Answer 1

Infanticide is the intentional killing of infants. For example the process of abortion in which the infant is killed inside the mothers womb before it develops fully. This is dine mostly because the child may be unwanted by their parents. The era of the pre-industrial times is characterized by the agrarian and poor economy, in these times most of the people were poor and mostly dependent on the agriculture for their livings. But the agricultural system was not advanced but it was at the primitive level so it could not give them enough income. So the possible economic origin of the infanticide in the pre-industrial era may be the lack of income of the parents. Since the people were poor they thought that if the child comes to the earth they will need money to take care of the child. Since most of the people could not afford their own livings so they practiced the infanticide to keep the expanses limited.

As a related practice, abortion is still prevalent in contemporary world. Before they practiced infanticide but later it took the form of female infanticide i.e. in most cases only the female child were aborted or even killed after birth. This was done because they thought that female child are not so helpful to them as a male child because a male child will earn extra income but a female child will not and many other nonsense reasons. Taking China as an example, the abortion has led to a rising sex ratio from the early 1980s. They aborted mostly female foetus/infants and hence mostly gave birth to male child and hence the sex ratio rose very high.

The primary reason behind the prevalence of abortion in post 1980 China was that due to the increasing population of China at a very high rate the government of China in order to control the population brought the policy of 'One Child norm'. According to this policy every parent can have only one child and not more than one. So when there was a chance of a second child the parents aborted the child and this practice increased the cases of abortion in post 1980s China. Since they could have only one child so most of them preferred a male child which led to an increase in the sex ratio and a large difference between the male and female child.