Introduction

Infant mortality is one of the most striking characteristics of pre-industrial demography. By modern standards the chances of survival for newly born children were astonishingly low. Almost one quarter of infants did not reach the first birthday, and mortality remained high in childhood. From an economic point of view one might conclude that pre-industrial fertility was very inefficient. It took many births to produce a smaller number of surviving children. From an emotional point of view some authors have referred to this phenomenon as “the massacre of the innocents.” The high death rates of the very young deserve attention because they highlight the economic conditions of life in the societies involved, the social differentiation within these societies, and the ‘deliberate’ choices made by historical actors.

When comparing a Western European and a Chinese population, as we do here, one also confronts an important issue, the practice of infanticide in China. Thomas Malthus pointed to the effects of early and universal marriage among the Chinese which resulted, in his view, in a high growth rate of population which “must be repressed by occasional famines, and by the custom of exposing children, which, in times of distress, is probably more frequent than is ever acknowledged to Europeans,” (Malthus 1960). Malthus clearly distinguished European demography from Chinese demography by attributing preventive checks of late, non-universal marriage to the European system and positive checks to the Chinese system.

This view has been challenged by a new generation of scholars in the China field (Wang, Lee and Campbell 1995; Lee and Campbell 1997; Zhao 1997). Their views were brought together in One Quarter of Humanity. Malthusian Mythology and Chinese Realities by James Lee and Wang Feng (1999). The authors challenged the traditional assumptions of demographers with regard to Chinese fertility. Malthus was wrong, the authors argued, when he claimed that positive checks controlled Chinese population growth. Chinese actors should not be seen as passive victims of circumstances. Four mechanisms actively influenced growth rates: (mostly female) infanticide, a gender-unbalanced marriage market, a low level of marital fertility and, lastly, adoption. In Lee's view, the gender differentiated character of infant mortality provides a strong example of ‘proactive’ behavior, and thus of the inadequacy of the Malthusian model.