Family size control by infanticide in the great agrarian societies of Asia

Abstract

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.