Family Size Control by Infanticide in the Great Agrarian Societies of Asia

Bibliographic Data

ID2955230
AuthorsJohn C Caldwell (Demography and Sociology Program, Research School of Social Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia), Bruce Caldwell (Australian National University), Bruce K Caldwell (National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, The Australian National University)
Year2005
Volume36
Issue2
Pages205-226
Publication date2005-05-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Comparative Family Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0047-2328 • E-ISSN: 1929-9850
PublisherUniversity of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.3138/jcfs.36.2.205
OpenAlexW4252924338
LanguageEN
Citations received11

There is now sufficient historical demographic analysis of India, Japan and China to show that infanticide has traditionally been employed to shape families. The driving force has often been the need to preserve family property from division by inheritance or dispersal by the payment of high dowries, although, especially in China, current subsistence problems have also been important. The practice has often been more frequent among the rich than the poor and may have increased as economic advancement became more possible. Nevertheless, it is probable that high child mortality ensured that most families did not have to practise infanticide, which probably played only a modest role in determining the level of population equilibrium. The factor making infanticide more likely than in hunter-gatherer societies is the possession of land. The Judaeo-Christian-Muslim outlawing of infanticide provided the incentive both to try to eliminate the practice and to record its existence.$$infanticide, historical demography, population control, agricultural societies, land, inheritance, dowry, India, Japan, China

Agrarian society · Agriculture · Biology · Birth control · China · Development economics · Dowry · Economic growth · Economics · Extended family · Family planning · Genealogy · Geography · Incentive · Inheritance (genetic algorithm) · Political science · Population · Population control · Population growth · Possession (linguistics) · Socioeconomics · Sociology · Subsistence agriculture · Demographic Trends and Gender Preferences · Demography · History · Law

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