Low fertility in premodern China: Positive, preventive or proactive behaviour?

Abstract

There has taken place recently the re-emergence among specialists of Chinese population history of a debate that started in the 1980's. This debate deals with the reasons for relatively low Chinese fertility in the 19th and early 20th century, and focuses on the question of whether proactive behaviour or a low standard of living was responsible for the low fertility. In this article we summarize the debate and tackle two issues. First, we summarize the biological evidence for the relationship between food and fertility. It turns out that some studies support the existence of this relationship, while other authors contest it. Even if fertility and malnourishment are related, one has to prove that the Chinese population was poor enough to influence fertility negatively. Both contemporary writers and anthropometric studies oppose the recent revisionist view that Chinese fertility was not determined by positive checks. On both issues the debate is still unsettled. The article looks at the reasons for this and advocates a less polemical and more constructive approach.

Keywords:

• History
• Fertility
• China

Notes

1 Theo Engelen is professor of historical demography at the Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands) and co-director of the research program “Population and Society in Taiwan and The Netherlands”.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Theo Engelen

1 Theo Engelen is professor of historical demography at the Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands) and co-director of the research program “Population and Society in Taiwan and The Netherlands”.