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Coital frequency is at the heart of the debate over low marital fertility in pretransition China. This study argues that coital frequency in contemporary China is indicative of sexual behavior in an earlier era. Frequency of intercourse is low in China relative to Europe, a natural outgrowth of a traditional family system and related sexual culture only partially transformed by a century of family revolution. Customary sexual behaviors and breastfeeding practices together shaped the Chinese historical fertility regime as they did the European. As explanations for China's low marital fertility, these proximate determinants leave little scope for the operation of fecundity‐reducing malnutrition on the one hand, or deliberate fertility control on the other. The fertility regimes of other pretransition agrarian societies more closely resemble China's than Europe's, seeming to confirm a pattern of European demographic exceptionalism.

The 2000 census of China has several notable innovations, including a sample long form containing detailed items on migration, housing, and employment. Preliminary data indicate rapid urbanization and continued rapid social change in the 1990s, and apparent success in the government's drive to curtail population growth. Although a post‐enumeration survey indicates that overall data quality is good, the rise of a mobile "floating population" and pressures of the birth planning program caused problems for the enumeration of migrants and infants. Data released to date have been silent on two important issues, fertility and rising sex ratios.

In China there is less inequality in the fortunes than in the conditions of men. Property in land has been divided into very moderate parcels, by the successive distribution of the possessions of every father equally among his sons. It rarely happens that there is but one son to enjoy the whole property of his deceased parents; and from the general prevalence of early marriages, this property is not often increased by collateral succession. These causes constantly tend to level wealth; and few succeed to such an accumulation of it as to render them independent of any efforts of their own for its increase. It is a common remark among the Chinese that fortunes seldom continue [to be] considerable in the same family beyond the third generation.

Abstract This study analyzes the variation in one measure of son preference that is of particular relevance in rural China: whether a woman considers it important to have a son, and the reasons why sons are important. To summarize our conclusions, we find that the expectation that a son will provide financial support in old age is strongly associated with the response that a son is important. This expectation is stronger in low income and mountainous villages, but it is weaker among women who earn cash income. The importance of a son is positively associated with ancestor worship and negatively associated with respondents' education, personal autonomy, the extent to which the husband shares housework, and exposure to the world beyond the village. We also find that sex‐specific rates of infant mortality vary systematically with mother's response on the importance of a son, providing a test of the validity of our preference measure.

The story of the rural Chinese family household in the post-Mao period is generally told in one of three ways, which might be labelled modernization, tradition restored, and demographic determinism. Modernization parallels the family theories of classical sociology: economic development and education tend to undermine extended family living arrangements by instilling nuclear family preferences, while the relaxation of migration restrictions allows young men to seek their fortune away from home. "Tradition restored" sees collectivization as having undermined the foundation of the extended family household, the family economy. The return of family farming has, in this view, restored the conditions under which the extended family can flourish. The demographic determinisi view assumes that family preferences persist but that demographic structures change. Rising life expectancies and declining fertility should increase rates of family extension, since smaller families mean that there will be fewer brothers available to live with a surviving parent. Thus as the birth control cohorts come of age, the prevalence of extended households should increase.

The article is concerned with rural family change in Hebei and Shaanxi, surveyed in 1985, and Shandong and Guangdong, surveyed in 1987, in respect of two fundamental processes of the Chinese family, patrilocal marriage and family division. These surveys were carried out by the Chinese State Statistical Bureau. The authors note that patrilocal marriage remains strong in these four provinces. The chances that a bride will reside with her husband's parents, at least briefly after marriage, has remained stable or even risen since 1950. (DÜI-Sen)

This article examines the relationship between economic and socio-demographic variables and male marriage patterns in 144 rural villages of Jurong county, Jiangsu province, China, in 1933. While marriage for females is young and universal, the incidence of male marriage varies greatly across villages, a variability that is consistent with an economic view of marriage. Marriage is associated with farm ownership, land quality and male literacy. The demographic context, as measured by the sex ratio of the marriageable population, is also important. High sex ratios in Jurong produce a chronic marriage squeeze for males. These ratios also correspond to the economic conditions of a locale.