EL CANAL "IDA"
3. MANIPURA El Centro del PLEXO SOLAR 4 ANAHATA El Centro CARDIACO.
Direct involvement in the program performance greatly increases the cost of the data quality of the family planning statistics (Banister 1987; Scharping 2003; Smith et al.
1997). This suggests that some problems may be specific to the statistics of this program, in addition to some general problems equally existing in other statistics. Under the current program, the higher-level family planning administrations assign the family planning targets to lower-level administrations and monitor and evaluate the program performance of lower-level administrations according to their reported statistics. This evaluation largely determines the level of remuneration for lower- level program workers and affects their tenure in office and opportunities for promotion. Unlike the case with other data sources, the data collectors of the family planning statistics are also program workers at the grassroots level. It is in the best interests of those lower level family planning workers to keep the reported birth figures as low as the pre-set targets, either through strict policy implementation or through falsification of statistics. This is the most important cause of the serious distortion of birth records in the program statistics compared to other sources.
It is important to distinguish the roles of program workers at different administrative levels, because their considerations in data collection and transmission differ considerably. The family planning commissions above the county level, being one among many government departments at each level, mainly engage in macro management rather than practical implementation. Accordingly, they can easily delegate the problems found either in program efforts or in population statistics to lower-level administrations. Most family planning work is carried out at the rural township and village level. Accordingly, the program workers at these levels face the strongest pressure accumulated from all higher-level administrations on the one hand; on the other, they also encounter resistance from their fellow-villagers. In addition, they are responsible for collecting the necessary statistics. Once their pre- assigned tasks in certain years were too difficult to achieve, either in parity restriction or in timing restriction, non-reporting or underreporting of out-of-plan births became a better choice.
It is equally important to recognise that the program statistics are compiled by tens of thousands of program workers at the grassroots level. Except in some eastern developed provinces, most of them had little education, with educational achievement on average less than the secondary-school level. Several field studies reported that in some villages the family planning cadres did not even know how to
fill in the basic statistical forms (Bao 1993; Li 1991; Wang 1993). However, these program workers actually maintained the women’s information cards and registration booklets. Understandably, their low statistical competence contributed to the problems of the program statistics.
It is frustrating to see no progress in improving the completeness of birth records in the program statistics despite a number of measures taken by the SFPC since the early 1990s. There are very likely to be other factors affecting the quality of the program statistics. One recent study by the SFPC officials reports that there were probably up to 2.7 million women of reproductive age, and 2.1 million of married women missed from the program statistics during the period from 1996 to 2000 (see Cai and Du 2001).
Table 3.8 compares the number of first marriages between those estimated from censuses and surveys and those recorded in the program statistics. Obviously, the registered marriages were lower than the estimated series each year. If the estimated number of first marriage based on the 1990 census and the marriage pattern in the 1997 and 2001 SFPC survey are reliable, it is probable that up to 23.6 million women form their first marriage were not included in the program statistics, no matter how many births these women have had. If this was the case, it can be suggested that the huge loss of births in the program statistics may not result from the outright underreporting of births alone, but also from the exclusion of many births because their mothers had already been missed.
Table 3.8 Comparison of annual number of first marriages between those reported in the family planning statistics and estimated based census and surveys in China, 1991-2000
Estimated women aged 20-29 (millions)
Estimated number of first marriage (millions)
Reported number of first marriage (millions) Annual difference (millions) Year (1) (2) (3) (4)=(2)-(3) 1991 11.90 11.30 9.40 1.90 1992 12.30 11.10 8.90 2.20 1993 12.20 11.70 8.10 3.60 1994 12.10 11.40 8.50 2.90 1995 12.00 11.00 8.30 2.70 1996 11.70 10.60 8.30 2.30 1997 11.60 10.20 8.00 2.20 1998 11.30 9.80 7.60 2.20 1999 10.90 9.50 7.70 1.80 2000 10.50 9.30 7.50 1.80 Total 116.50 105.90 82.30 23.60
Sources: The reported number of first marriage are taken from Cai and Zhang (2000: 3); the estimated number of women aged 20-29 is own calculations based on the 1982, 1990 and 2000 census; the estimated first marriage series are own calculations based on the marriage patterns reported in the 1997 and 2001 surveys.
Examination of the statistical requirements and procedures offers some clues to this possibility. In order to capture the births of migrated women, the 1990 SFPC and SSB joint circular for family planning statistics aimed to distinguish the responsibility of family planning administrations for the current and permanent residence of migrated women. As mentioned earlier, this document did not reduce, but actually increased the problems in statistics. It is true that many temporary migrants were hard to capture, but more importantly, given the importance of reducing the number of births in any administration, it was in the best interests of administrations at both the current and permanent residential locations of temporary migrants to miss them out. In practice, this strategy seemed better for local program workers than outright underreporting of births, if their pre-assigned targets were hard to achieve.
3.9 Conclusion
This chapter reviews the data collection operations and underreporting of births in the hukou statistics and family planning statistics, both of which affect the general understanding of the quality of fertility data. The reliability of the hukou statistics was greatly weakened along with the diminished importance of the hukou system during the reform era. The implementation of the one-child policy and the hugely increased rural-urban population mobility further worsened this situation. Given their fundamental role for other statistics, there is no doubt that the weakened hukou statistics also affect the quality of other population statistics. Contrary to the general impression, it is found that a huge number of out-of-plan births actually appeared in the statistics, but registered as in-migrants or adopted children.
The family planning statistics suffer from serious underreporting of births due to direct involvement in the program efforts. The double feature of local program workers also being data collectors offers them incentives and opportunity to manipulate the statistics at will. But it is suggested that the huge loss of birth records in the program statistics may not result from underreporting of births alone, while the systematic shortcomings in the statistical procedures also made contributions. The findings from the SFPC village surveys have been widely referred to as evidence of data deterioration in the 1990s. However, these surveys demonstrated that most underreporting of births came from local cadres, while individual couples were found to be largely co-operative in carefully designed interviews. Moreover, it would be misleading to directly use the detected extent of underreporting of births in local program statistics in other statistics.