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Researchers may have ‘found’ many of China’s 30M missing girls

205 points by kafkaesq 10y ago

jewel 10y ago
In the United States we had the opposite problem. The 1986 Tax Reform mandated that the social security numbers of children be included in order to claim them as dependents to get a tax break. Seven million children 'disappeared' the next year. http://www.snopes.com/business/taxes/dependents.asp http://www.snopes.com/business/taxes/dependents.asp
- AtheistOfFail 10y ago
  If I remember correctly, a lot of it was traced to divorced parents claiming the children on both tax refunds which this law did away with, only the person with most/solo custody can claim the children now.
  - Spooky23 10y ago
    My grand uncle claimed his dog for years.
  - acdha 10y ago
    The snopes.com link above quotes this towards the bottom: ”The tax agency said about 20 percent of the vanished dependents were children who had been claimed as dependents by both parents after a divorce. Under the law, only one parent may claim the child as a deduction. Most of the others probably never existed, John Szilagyi, an I.R.S. researcher, said. And some families apparently became quite greedy in creating dependents, each worth a $1,080 deduction in 1986, and $1,900 in 1987. About 66,000 taxpayers who claimed four or more dependents in 1986 claimed none in 1987, after the Social Security identification rule went into effect. And more than 11,000 families claimed seven or more dependents in 1986, but none in 1987.”
    - AtheistOfFail 10y ago
      > And more than 11,000 families claimed seven or more dependents in 1986, but none in 1987. So, big lie, you mean. -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie
      - acdha 10y ago
        That doesn't seem relevant to this thread?
        AtheistOfFail 10y ago
        It is, it's a technique where the bigger the lie, the harder to dispute.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - cauterized 10y ago
      Wow, that's a lot of septuplets graduating high school!
- microtherion 10y ago
  My younger son lives in this kind of limbo existence. As a former green card holder, I have to file US taxes, but since my son was born in Switzerland to non-US citizens and never lived in the US, he's not eligible for a SSN or ITIN, so I can't claim him as a dependent.
  - ma2rten 10y ago
    You can't claim dependents who didn't live in the US for the majority of the tax year anyway.
  - einarvollset 10y ago
    What makes you think that as a former green card holder you have to file taxes? My understanding is that if you give it up, no need.
    - pzh 10y ago
      You need to renounce your residence with the IRS as well, and then they require you to pay an exit tax on the cash value of all your assets as if they were sold on the same day. Because of the principle of citizenship based taxation, US residence/citizenship can be quite a burden for those who don't live in the US--just take a look at FATCA and all the filing requirements and penalties.
      - beagle3 10y ago
        And you can only do that if your last 5 years of taxes are properly filed.
      - seanmcdirmid 10y ago
        Green card != citizenship. In fact, you can lose your green card just by not living in the USA for 6 months out of the year.
        pzh 10y ago
        True, but there is a difference between residence for tax purposes and residence for immigration purposes. You may live a certain number of years (7-8?) in the US, give up your greencard, and still be considered a resident for tax purposes for life or until you relinquish with the IRS and pay your exit tax.
- hkmurakami 10y ago
  And in Japan, the deceased elderly remain "alive on paper" so that the family members can continue to collect their pensions and federal social security checks.
andrewfromx 10y ago
oh I see, the official policy was 1 child, but when multiple births happened or the 1st child was a girl, the local hospital type people just looked the other way and never put the birth into the system.
- anthony-james 10y ago
  This is essentially the entire article, without the clickbait or ads.
  - aaronchall 10y ago
    Or the pay-wall block because my employer won't let them serve the ads.
- AtheistOfFail 10y ago
  I mean, you see this in any dictatorship or even at any level of power. The same cops that would flush some weed down the toilet so you don't get thrown in jail or not give people drunk and disorderly tickets would be akin to a hospital's staff not registering a child so the family could try for a boy.
- blahedo 10y ago
  Close: if the 1st was a girl, the 2nd was permitted even officially (at least in the later years of the system). But if you had a girl and then a second girl, there would be incentive to hide the second girl so you'd be legally permitted to try again for a boy.
  - officialjunk 10y ago
    also note that this logic only applies to the "free" children, as in no additional fees/tax to pay for the extra birth. for families that can afford the tax, you can and always could have as many children as you can afford.
- swuecho 10y ago
  A lot of the people in china simply are not borned in hospital 20 ago. Every family has at least two children from where I grown up, even the official of the village. More like the case of speeding. You are not allowed, but you can get away with it, if the police are not there or feel it is better for him to not give you a ticket. even a lot of Chinese are surprised when I talk about this with them. So be careful about the media's report. (they report what they think it is true, but might not)
pierrec 10y ago
It's well known that many Chinese are financially unable to register their second+ child. The unregistered children have no official identity, can't lead normal lives, can't go to school, etc. It's to be expected that some will choose not to register their first when it's a girl. Hopefully this will soon be a thing of the past as they are loosening the policies. There are many other documentaries and articles on unregistered children such as this: http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/10/world/asia/china-second-child/ http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/10/world/asia/china-second-child/
- seanmcdirmid 10y ago
  This is only partially true, with many exceptions. But ya, many girls in the countryside are hukou-free, unregistered, off the grid, non-persons, etc...China is trying to change this, the central gov would prefer everyone was registered, but local governments make too much money on family planning fines to give it up.
sean_patel 10y ago
> "There is nothing more socially unstable than a bunch of testosterone with nowhere to go." Yep. This has what has happened in the Arab world. Bunch of testosterone with nowhere to go, so they joined a "Holy War" / "Jihad" and blow up a bunch of people and places. This is also the reason why the refugees from the Arab countries molested women in Germany and Austria. EDIT: Why the downvotes, because you don't agree with this? Here's some evidence: See the "Demographic masculinization and Polygamy" section > In the wake of it, the general level of testosterone of the whole male population will rise, frustrations will accumulate, there will be an escalation of competitive spirit, men will engage in high-risk activities and antisocial behaviors shall multiply. The social equilibrium will waggle and an eventual economic and social instability will endanger the stability of the entire world. Source: http://socialethology.com/why-young-men-become-terrorists-and-join-isis http://socialethology.com/why-young-men-become-terrorists-an...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- duaneb 10y ago
  Good luck illustrating this. Oh wait, why bother in a democracy! People KNOW it's true already.
- cosinetau 10y ago
  I feel that's a little sexist. I'm not sure why folks think that men are only capable of causing harm when men have nothing to fuck.
  - JupiterMoon 10y ago
    Because men that having something to fuck end up having babies. Having a child for a majority of men is a life changing experience that makes them less likely to be violent (expect in defense of the child).
- rinchik1 10y ago
  This is a very overacted summary of a very interesting thought. I don't think it should be down-voted but rather explored. I might be giving you more credit than it is socially appropriate for this kind of statement, but it definitely caught my attention and triggered cognitive mini-explosion :)
aluminussoma 10y ago
This is great news. I hosted a mutual friend from China for several weeks. At the time, the guest had a family relation in China who was pregnant with her second child. She choice to abort the baby because the associated financial penalties would be too high. I hope more research is done to quantify the number of unregistered births. I personally find 25 million unregistered out of 30 to 60 million estimated to be a bit high of a ratio.
throwaway1040 10y ago
Makes you wonder how many illegal aliens, dead people, and other equally ineligible voters would likewise disappear if each state enacted strong voter ID laws.
- Kluny 10y ago
  Given that most legal voters can't even be arsed to show up, probably not that many.
- excitom 10y ago
  Few to none? And I'm not being facetious. All investigations to date into such "fraud" find negligible evidence.
  - rokosbasilisk 10y ago
    what investigations? both parties made it real hard to do any legitimate analysis for years.
    - rtpg 10y ago
      The only universe where large scale fraud is happening but being hidden by Republicans and Democrats is one where third parties are, in fact , getting much more of the vote Considering the polls (no, the polls weren't that wrong for the election results, the analysis was).... the only way we are in this universe is if all polling organisations are also in on this. Considering states + cities run elections, this would mean several tens of thousands of people would need to be in on this plot too. A conspiracy which requires conplicity of tens of thousands of stakeholders seems a bit unlikely. There's an alternative "many independent conspiracies " view, but smaller conspiracies would be more fragile to single whistleblowers. If one congressman were winning through vote fraud, one person with a bit of evidence would be enough for there to be real coverage (unless the media's in on it, but see prev. paragraph)
      - rokosbasilisk 10y ago
Kluny 10y ago
A lot of [] people in China simply [were] not [born] in hospitals 20 [years] ago. Every family has at least two children [] where I [grew] up, even the official of the village. More like the case of speeding. You are not allowed, but you can get away with it, if the police are not there or [they] feel it is better [] to not give you a ticket. [Even] a lot of Chinese are surprised when I talk about this with them. So be careful about the media's report. (they report what they think it is true, but might not [be]).
- inimino 10y ago
  This isn't Grammar News. Unsolicited public correction of someone's second-language grammar is beyond rude.
  - zhemao 10y ago
    Especially since the poster is likely not a native English speaker.
  - was_boring 10y ago
    Especially when fixing the grammar doesn't change the overall message of the post. I read it without even noticing the mistakes.
  - zeroer 10y ago
    No it's not. It looks like constructive helpful feedback to me. I, for one, appreciate people's grammar being better on HN. Granted, a private message would have been better, but HN doesn't support that.
    - inimino 10y ago
      > I, for one, appreciate people's grammar being better on HN. If you want to accomplish that by making non-native speakers feel unwelcome, unsolicited corrections are a great idea. Otherwise not so much.
      - 10y ago
rplst8 10y ago
So either the missing girls where aborted, killed, or once the family had a boy as the first child, they stopped having kids. Or people just ignored the policy altogether. And central planning works how exactly?
- gohrt 10y ago
  What are you talking about? The article argues that the unaccounted girls were not aborted or killed. Anyway, to answer your question, the central planning works to reduce population growth.
  - zhemao 10y ago
    I think this article casts some doubt on whether the one-child policy was actually successful at reducing population growth. It certainly reduced the birth rate in urban areas where enforcement was stronger. But it seems like rural families had just as many kids as they would otherwise.
    - meric 10y ago
      The families who had male children as their first child were more likely to have less children.
  - rplst8 10y ago
    I'm saying out of all the possibilities, that's what could have happened. Either millions of girls weren't born because they selectively picked boys... OR as the article asserts, people ignored the policy entirely and hid the fact they had illegal children. Either outcome is a total failure of the ability of a repressive government to control its citizenry. One option is a moral failure, the other is a policy failure.
paulmd 10y ago
As long as it's a federal ID that's given freely to every single citizen at birth, why not? The shortcomings of the Social Security Number as a registration number are obvious. The shortcomings of letting the states handle ID are obvious - we tried that right now and it's not working, there's still a huge number of people country-wide with no ID and obvious barriers being erected to keep them from getting it. The only solution is to register people for a free Federal ID number nationwide and require it to be acceptable as a form of voter ID. People who need records of citizenship retrieved (birth certificates, etc) or affadavits of birth filed should also receive assistance they need to retrieve or validate their records from states/counties no matter how "reticent" they may be about letting LaQuan register to vote. This assistance should be provided by Federal courts under the Equal Protection clause at no charge to any citizen swearing an affadavit of legal birth, and the states billed for any court costs or legal costs incurred regarding citizens born in their state, whether successful or not. By all means, let's move into the future. But everyone comes with us, you don't get to lock out black people just because they are more likely to be born at home and not have documentation that their state finds acceptable while Mr Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III gets to present his hunting license. Oh wait suddenly it's the Mark Of The Beast? You don't say, golly who could have predicted such a reaction.
- rokosbasilisk 10y ago
  Wow are you implying Im racist? Im pro voter id because its sensible, you need an id to drive, rent a home, buy large goods, get a bank account, and even a nation with a billion people has voter ids. Both parties have exhibited enormous distrust in the current process, and we need solutions. Im also pro having a paper trail, and neutral observers.
  - paulmd 10y ago
    Black people are measurably less likely to own a car or have a bank account. You do not need an ID to rent a house or buy large goods. People are perfectly free to sell/rent to you without them. So your claim here is totally false. It's also totally irrelevant because none of those are Constitutionally-defined rights of citizens. Of course states have the ability to make up arbitrarily-defined rules that "just happen" to cut however they want - like "failure to pass poll test" (black), "failure to pay poll tax" (black), banning felons (7-10 times more likely to be black), "unable to provide ID" (4 times more likely to be black), etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_rights_in_the_United_States#Background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_rights_in_the_United_St... http://www.dailywire.com/news/7441/7-statistics-you-need-know-about-black-black-crime-aaron-bandler http://www.dailywire.com/news/7441/7-statistics-you-need-kno... https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/10/09/report-voter-id-laws-reduce-turnout-more-among-african-american-and-younger-voters/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/10/09/r... You can see the racist history there. Every single time poll restrictions have been proposed it's been for racist causes. So yes, if you're pushing for voter ID laws and not pushing for a uniform, Federally-administered form of identification that is freely and easily available at no cost to the individual, and universally accepted, you're pushing for racist ends. You yourself may not be a hooded member of the KKK, but you are pushing for the same things, and that's all that matters. All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. That's why "disparate impact" type laws are so important. In 2010, North Carolina literally reviewed racial maps to help their attempt maximize the disenfranchisement of black people. Shocker here: the South didn't suddenly become Not Racist in the past 5 years, it's a continual fight against those same states that has been repeated over and over again every couple years over a 200 year timeframe. http://www.wral.com/federal-judges-racially-tainted-general-assembly-districts-must-be-redrawn/15920846/ http://www.wral.com/federal-judges-racially-tainted-general-... You can see the voting bloc for yourself right here, Lee Atwater's Solid South, or the "Dixiecrats" as they used to be known before they defected to the Republican party: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_South https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_South Ask yourself: do you want someone who is eligible to be denied their vote? Do you actually want to discriminate on racial grounds? Do you want other people to be discriminated against on racial grounds because they happen to live in other states? Because you know that there are states that are pushing for the latest refresh that they think will juuuuust pass Supreme Court review right now, just like they did 5 years ago. That's why Disparate Impact-type laws are so important. If you answered "no" to those questions then at the end of the day we're on the same page here. I don't think there's anything wrong with having to show an ID to vote. I think everyone should be able to have one in case they want to drive or get a bank account too. But a huge number of people don't have those IDs, and face huge barriers that are deliberately elected to keep them from getting them. And that's where the Constitutional foot comes down, because there's no enumerated right to get a bank account or drive a car. The only way that such justice has been delivered, historically, is when the Federal government puts its boot down on the throat of certain states and forces them to recognize the rights of their citizens. And golly those states that keep trying these things also just happen to be the same states that seceded to protect their right to own black people, were forced to recognize their citizens as people when Sherman burned them to the ground, and have been trying to kill and disenfranchise black people ever since. A shocking and doubtlessly entirely unrelated coincidence, I should think /s. If you want an example of how "observers" play out in practice, you can just look at the (still-extant) consent decree forbidding the Republican Party to send any more "observers" after they were hiring off-duty cops in armbands to intimidate voters in Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in the 1981 election. If you support armbanded thugs with state-granted police powers going around and intimidating legitimate black/hispanic voters living in minority-heavy areas? Yeah, you're racist. That's a thing that happened not too long ago, easily within memory of someone who might be reading and posting here right now, in fact. That's what "observers" means and has always meant. Back in the day it was the White Citizens' Councils who handled those duties. Farther back, it was just the Klan and they'd just lynch any black person who tried to vote. Maybe you get your ballot in, maybe you don't (usually "not" thanks to poll tests/poll taxes), but either way they get you on the way out, and you're not coming back to cast any other votes. Electoral integrity assured. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_Security_Task_Force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_Security_Task_Force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens'_Councils https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens'_Councils "Neutral" observers are fine. But by "neutral" I mean like from the EU or some other allied-but-disinterested party, not someone who stands to win or lose in (or even simply gain or lose from) the election. And again, that's not how the issue has ever played out in practice. "Poll watching" and "integrity assurance" have always meant "suppressing minority votes". Remember in Florida 2000 when the Republicans ""erroneously"" purged hundreds of thousands of black people from the voter rolls to ""protect the integrity of the vote"", but it turned out that less than 5% of those people were actually invalid voters? Golly, oops!!! (and by the way: we win, no do-overs.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Central_Voter_File https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Central_Voter_File The reality is that voter fraud is an utterly insignificant problem that's not really worth considering - until it happens to benefit one of the parties to mount a voter-suppression effort. If you wanted to rig the election you would do it at the level of voting machines or tally systems, not the voters. Paper trails are all well and good, but a backup system is worthless if you don't actually know if it can be successfully recovered back to production. Most places can't even handle county-level recounts, let alone multiple states that were won within a 0.1% margin. We need a certain percent of counties (say 25%) to be randomly selected after the fact for a recount with Federal oversight (or even better: here's where we can pull in those international observers!), so that every county is ready for it. Can't do it before the deadline? A vote count for any candidate exceeds a 0.1% error margin? Your whole state gets recounted because you're obviously either too incompetent to run an election or trying to pull something.

205 points by kafkaesq 10y ago

jewel 10y ago

In the United States we had the opposite problem. The 1986 Tax Reform mandated that the social security numbers of children be included in order to claim them as dependents to get a tax break. Seven million children 'disappeared' the next year. http://www.snopes.com/business/taxes/dependents.asp http://www.snopes.com/business/taxes/dependents.asp

AtheistOfFail 10y ago
If I remember correctly, a lot of it was traced to divorced parents claiming the children on both tax refunds which this law did away with, only the person with most/solo custody can claim the children now.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  My grand uncle claimed his dog for years.
- acdha 10y ago
  The snopes.com link above quotes this towards the bottom: ”The tax agency said about 20 percent of the vanished dependents were children who had been claimed as dependents by both parents after a divorce. Under the law, only one parent may claim the child as a deduction. Most of the others probably never existed, John Szilagyi, an I.R.S. researcher, said. And some families apparently became quite greedy in creating dependents, each worth a $1,080 deduction in 1986, and $1,900 in 1987. About 66,000 taxpayers who claimed four or more dependents in 1986 claimed none in 1987, after the Social Security identification rule went into effect. And more than 11,000 families claimed seven or more dependents in 1986, but none in 1987.”
  - AtheistOfFail 10y ago
    > And more than 11,000 families claimed seven or more dependents in 1986, but none in 1987. So, big lie, you mean. -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie
    - acdha 10y ago
      That doesn't seem relevant to this thread?
      - AtheistOfFail 10y ago
        It is, it's a technique where the bigger the lie, the harder to dispute.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - cauterized 10y ago
    Wow, that's a lot of septuplets graduating high school!
microtherion 10y ago
My younger son lives in this kind of limbo existence. As a former green card holder, I have to file US taxes, but since my son was born in Switzerland to non-US citizens and never lived in the US, he's not eligible for a SSN or ITIN, so I can't claim him as a dependent.
- ma2rten 10y ago
  You can't claim dependents who didn't live in the US for the majority of the tax year anyway.
- einarvollset 10y ago
  What makes you think that as a former green card holder you have to file taxes? My understanding is that if you give it up, no need.
  - pzh 10y ago
    You need to renounce your residence with the IRS as well, and then they require you to pay an exit tax on the cash value of all your assets as if they were sold on the same day. Because of the principle of citizenship based taxation, US residence/citizenship can be quite a burden for those who don't live in the US--just take a look at FATCA and all the filing requirements and penalties.
    - beagle3 10y ago
      And you can only do that if your last 5 years of taxes are properly filed.
    - seanmcdirmid 10y ago
      Green card != citizenship. In fact, you can lose your green card just by not living in the USA for 6 months out of the year.
      - pzh 10y ago
        True, but there is a difference between residence for tax purposes and residence for immigration purposes. You may live a certain number of years (7-8?) in the US, give up your greencard, and still be considered a resident for tax purposes for life or until you relinquish with the IRS and pay your exit tax.
hkmurakami 10y ago
And in Japan, the deceased elderly remain "alive on paper" so that the family members can continue to collect their pensions and federal social security checks.

andrewfromx 10y ago

oh I see, the official policy was 1 child, but when multiple births happened or the 1st child was a girl, the local hospital type people just looked the other way and never put the birth into the system.

anthony-james 10y ago
This is essentially the entire article, without the clickbait or ads.
- aaronchall 10y ago
  Or the pay-wall block because my employer won't let them serve the ads.
AtheistOfFail 10y ago
I mean, you see this in any dictatorship or even at any level of power. The same cops that would flush some weed down the toilet so you don't get thrown in jail or not give people drunk and disorderly tickets would be akin to a hospital's staff not registering a child so the family could try for a boy.
blahedo 10y ago
Close: if the 1st was a girl, the 2nd was permitted even officially (at least in the later years of the system). But if you had a girl and then a second girl, there would be incentive to hide the second girl so you'd be legally permitted to try again for a boy.
- officialjunk 10y ago
  also note that this logic only applies to the "free" children, as in no additional fees/tax to pay for the extra birth. for families that can afford the tax, you can and always could have as many children as you can afford.
swuecho 10y ago
A lot of the people in china simply are not borned in hospital 20 ago. Every family has at least two children from where I grown up, even the official of the village. More like the case of speeding. You are not allowed, but you can get away with it, if the police are not there or feel it is better for him to not give you a ticket. even a lot of Chinese are surprised when I talk about this with them. So be careful about the media's report. (they report what they think it is true, but might not)

pierrec 10y ago

It's well known that many Chinese are financially unable to register their second+ child. The unregistered children have no official identity, can't lead normal lives, can't go to school, etc. It's to be expected that some will choose not to register their first when it's a girl. Hopefully this will soon be a thing of the past as they are loosening the policies. There are many other documentaries and articles on unregistered children such as this: http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/10/world/asia/china-second-child/ http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/10/world/asia/china-second-child/

seanmcdirmid 10y ago
This is only partially true, with many exceptions. But ya, many girls in the countryside are hukou-free, unregistered, off the grid, non-persons, etc...China is trying to change this, the central gov would prefer everyone was registered, but local governments make too much money on family planning fines to give it up.

sean_patel 10y ago

> "There is nothing more socially unstable than a bunch of testosterone with nowhere to go." Yep. This has what has happened in the Arab world. Bunch of testosterone with nowhere to go, so they joined a "Holy War" / "Jihad" and blow up a bunch of people and places. This is also the reason why the refugees from the Arab countries molested women in Germany and Austria. EDIT: Why the downvotes, because you don't agree with this? Here's some evidence: See the "Demographic masculinization and Polygamy" section > In the wake of it, the general level of testosterone of the whole male population will rise, frustrations will accumulate, there will be an escalation of competitive spirit, men will engage in high-risk activities and antisocial behaviors shall multiply. The social equilibrium will waggle and an eventual economic and social instability will endanger the stability of the entire world. Source: http://socialethology.com/why-young-men-become-terrorists-and-join-isis http://socialethology.com/why-young-men-become-terrorists-an...

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
duaneb 10y ago
Good luck illustrating this. Oh wait, why bother in a democracy! People KNOW it's true already.
cosinetau 10y ago
I feel that's a little sexist. I'm not sure why folks think that men are only capable of causing harm when men have nothing to fuck.
- JupiterMoon 10y ago
  Because men that having something to fuck end up having babies. Having a child for a majority of men is a life changing experience that makes them less likely to be violent (expect in defense of the child).
rinchik1 10y ago
This is a very overacted summary of a very interesting thought. I don't think it should be down-voted but rather explored. I might be giving you more credit than it is socially appropriate for this kind of statement, but it definitely caught my attention and triggered cognitive mini-explosion :)

aluminussoma 10y ago

This is great news. I hosted a mutual friend from China for several weeks. At the time, the guest had a family relation in China who was pregnant with her second child. She choice to abort the baby because the associated financial penalties would be too high. I hope more research is done to quantify the number of unregistered births. I personally find 25 million unregistered out of 30 to 60 million estimated to be a bit high of a ratio.

throwaway1040 10y ago

Makes you wonder how many illegal aliens, dead people, and other equally ineligible voters would likewise disappear if each state enacted strong voter ID laws.

Kluny 10y ago
Given that most legal voters can't even be arsed to show up, probably not that many.
excitom 10y ago
Few to none? And I'm not being facetious. All investigations to date into such "fraud" find negligible evidence.
- rokosbasilisk 10y ago
  what investigations? both parties made it real hard to do any legitimate analysis for years.
  - rtpg 10y ago
    The only universe where large scale fraud is happening but being hidden by Republicans and Democrats is one where third parties are, in fact , getting much more of the vote Considering the polls (no, the polls weren't that wrong for the election results, the analysis was).... the only way we are in this universe is if all polling organisations are also in on this. Considering states + cities run elections, this would mean several tens of thousands of people would need to be in on this plot too. A conspiracy which requires conplicity of tens of thousands of stakeholders seems a bit unlikely. There's an alternative "many independent conspiracies " view, but smaller conspiracies would be more fragile to single whistleblowers. If one congressman were winning through vote fraud, one person with a bit of evidence would be enough for there to be real coverage (unless the media's in on it, but see prev. paragraph)
    - rokosbasilisk 10y ago

Kluny 10y ago

A lot of [] people in China simply [were] not [born] in hospitals 20 [years] ago. Every family has at least two children [] where I [grew] up, even the official of the village. More like the case of speeding. You are not allowed, but you can get away with it, if the police are not there or [they] feel it is better [] to not give you a ticket. [Even] a lot of Chinese are surprised when I talk about this with them. So be careful about the media's report. (they report what they think it is true, but might not [be]).

inimino 10y ago
This isn't Grammar News. Unsolicited public correction of someone's second-language grammar is beyond rude.
- zhemao 10y ago
  Especially since the poster is likely not a native English speaker.
- was_boring 10y ago
  Especially when fixing the grammar doesn't change the overall message of the post. I read it without even noticing the mistakes.
- zeroer 10y ago
  No it's not. It looks like constructive helpful feedback to me. I, for one, appreciate people's grammar being better on HN. Granted, a private message would have been better, but HN doesn't support that.
  - inimino 10y ago
    > I, for one, appreciate people's grammar being better on HN. If you want to accomplish that by making non-native speakers feel unwelcome, unsolicited corrections are a great idea. Otherwise not so much.
    - 10y ago

rplst8 10y ago

So either the missing girls where aborted, killed, or once the family had a boy as the first child, they stopped having kids. Or people just ignored the policy altogether. And central planning works how exactly?

gohrt 10y ago
What are you talking about? The article argues that the unaccounted girls were not aborted or killed. Anyway, to answer your question, the central planning works to reduce population growth.
- zhemao 10y ago
  I think this article casts some doubt on whether the one-child policy was actually successful at reducing population growth. It certainly reduced the birth rate in urban areas where enforcement was stronger. But it seems like rural families had just as many kids as they would otherwise.
  - meric 10y ago
    The families who had male children as their first child were more likely to have less children.
- rplst8 10y ago
  I'm saying out of all the possibilities, that's what could have happened. Either millions of girls weren't born because they selectively picked boys... OR as the article asserts, people ignored the policy entirely and hid the fact they had illegal children. Either outcome is a total failure of the ability of a repressive government to control its citizenry. One option is a moral failure, the other is a policy failure.

paulmd 10y ago

As long as it's a federal ID that's given freely to every single citizen at birth, why not? The shortcomings of the Social Security Number as a registration number are obvious. The shortcomings of letting the states handle ID are obvious - we tried that right now and it's not working, there's still a huge number of people country-wide with no ID and obvious barriers being erected to keep them from getting it. The only solution is to register people for a free Federal ID number nationwide and require it to be acceptable as a form of voter ID. People who need records of citizenship retrieved (birth certificates, etc) or affadavits of birth filed should also receive assistance they need to retrieve or validate their records from states/counties no matter how "reticent" they may be about letting LaQuan register to vote. This assistance should be provided by Federal courts under the Equal Protection clause at no charge to any citizen swearing an affadavit of legal birth, and the states billed for any court costs or legal costs incurred regarding citizens born in their state, whether successful or not. By all means, let's move into the future. But everyone comes with us, you don't get to lock out black people just because they are more likely to be born at home and not have documentation that their state finds acceptable while Mr Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III gets to present his hunting license. Oh wait suddenly it's the Mark Of The Beast? You don't say, golly who could have predicted such a reaction.

rokosbasilisk 10y ago
Wow are you implying Im racist? Im pro voter id because its sensible, you need an id to drive, rent a home, buy large goods, get a bank account, and even a nation with a billion people has voter ids. Both parties have exhibited enormous distrust in the current process, and we need solutions. Im also pro having a paper trail, and neutral observers.
- paulmd 10y ago
  Black people are measurably less likely to own a car or have a bank account. You do not need an ID to rent a house or buy large goods. People are perfectly free to sell/rent to you without them. So your claim here is totally false. It's also totally irrelevant because none of those are Constitutionally-defined rights of citizens. Of course states have the ability to make up arbitrarily-defined rules that "just happen" to cut however they want - like "failure to pass poll test" (black), "failure to pay poll tax" (black), banning felons (7-10 times more likely to be black), "unable to provide ID" (4 times more likely to be black), etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_rights_in_the_United_States#Background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_rights_in_the_United_St... http://www.dailywire.com/news/7441/7-statistics-you-need-know-about-black-black-crime-aaron-bandler http://www.dailywire.com/news/7441/7-statistics-you-need-kno... https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/10/09/report-voter-id-laws-reduce-turnout-more-among-african-american-and-younger-voters/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/10/09/r... You can see the racist history there. Every single time poll restrictions have been proposed it's been for racist causes. So yes, if you're pushing for voter ID laws and not pushing for a uniform, Federally-administered form of identification that is freely and easily available at no cost to the individual, and universally accepted, you're pushing for racist ends. You yourself may not be a hooded member of the KKK, but you are pushing for the same things, and that's all that matters. All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. That's why "disparate impact" type laws are so important. In 2010, North Carolina literally reviewed racial maps to help their attempt maximize the disenfranchisement of black people. Shocker here: the South didn't suddenly become Not Racist in the past 5 years, it's a continual fight against those same states that has been repeated over and over again every couple years over a 200 year timeframe. http://www.wral.com/federal-judges-racially-tainted-general-assembly-districts-must-be-redrawn/15920846/ http://www.wral.com/federal-judges-racially-tainted-general-... You can see the voting bloc for yourself right here, Lee Atwater's Solid South, or the "Dixiecrats" as they used to be known before they defected to the Republican party: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_South https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_South Ask yourself: do you want someone who is eligible to be denied their vote? Do you actually want to discriminate on racial grounds? Do you want other people to be discriminated against on racial grounds because they happen to live in other states? Because you know that there are states that are pushing for the latest refresh that they think will juuuuust pass Supreme Court review right now, just like they did 5 years ago. That's why Disparate Impact-type laws are so important. If you answered "no" to those questions then at the end of the day we're on the same page here. I don't think there's anything wrong with having to show an ID to vote. I think everyone should be able to have one in case they want to drive or get a bank account too. But a huge number of people don't have those IDs, and face huge barriers that are deliberately elected to keep them from getting them. And that's where the Constitutional foot comes down, because there's no enumerated right to get a bank account or drive a car. The only way that such justice has been delivered, historically, is when the Federal government puts its boot down on the throat of certain states and forces them to recognize the rights of their citizens. And golly those states that keep trying these things also just happen to be the same states that seceded to protect their right to own black people, were forced to recognize their citizens as people when Sherman burned them to the ground, and have been trying to kill and disenfranchise black people ever since. A shocking and doubtlessly entirely unrelated coincidence, I should think /s. If you want an example of how "observers" play out in practice, you can just look at the (still-extant) consent decree forbidding the Republican Party to send any more "observers" after they were hiring off-duty cops in armbands to intimidate voters in Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in the 1981 election. If you support armbanded thugs with state-granted police powers going around and intimidating legitimate black/hispanic voters living in minority-heavy areas? Yeah, you're racist. That's a thing that happened not too long ago, easily within memory of someone who might be reading and posting here right now, in fact. That's what "observers" means and has always meant. Back in the day it was the White Citizens' Councils who handled those duties. Farther back, it was just the Klan and they'd just lynch any black person who tried to vote. Maybe you get your ballot in, maybe you don't (usually "not" thanks to poll tests/poll taxes), but either way they get you on the way out, and you're not coming back to cast any other votes. Electoral integrity assured. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_Security_Task_Force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_Security_Task_Force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens'_Councils https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens'_Councils "Neutral" observers are fine. But by "neutral" I mean like from the EU or some other allied-but-disinterested party, not someone who stands to win or lose in (or even simply gain or lose from) the election. And again, that's not how the issue has ever played out in practice. "Poll watching" and "integrity assurance" have always meant "suppressing minority votes". Remember in Florida 2000 when the Republicans ""erroneously"" purged hundreds of thousands of black people from the voter rolls to ""protect the integrity of the vote"", but it turned out that less than 5% of those people were actually invalid voters? Golly, oops!!! (and by the way: we win, no do-overs.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Central_Voter_File https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Central_Voter_File The reality is that voter fraud is an utterly insignificant problem that's not really worth considering - until it happens to benefit one of the parties to mount a voter-suppression effort. If you wanted to rig the election you would do it at the level of voting machines or tally systems, not the voters. Paper trails are all well and good, but a backup system is worthless if you don't actually know if it can be successfully recovered back to production. Most places can't even handle county-level recounts, let alone multiple states that were won within a 0.1% margin. We need a certain percent of counties (say 25%) to be randomly selected after the fact for a recount with Federal oversight (or even better: here's where we can pull in those international observers!), so that every county is ready for it. Can't do it before the deadline? A vote count for any candidate exceeds a 0.1% error margin? Your whole state gets recounted because you're obviously either too incompetent to run an election or trying to pull something.