Scarcity of Women Could Hurt Chinese Manufacturing Competitiveness
Asian manufacturers have long depended on women to assemble products such as compact electronics that require detail work. That's because women, with their slender fingers and fine motor skills, are considered to be better at putting small parts in small spaces. In China, however, taking this approach could soon be challenging as reported today by the Wall Street Journal.
The journal story focuses on the likelihood that as a result of the declining population of working-age people and rising wages, some of China's manufacturing jobs will go to Mexico, thereby helping companies that transport freight from Mexico to the United States. But the most interesting part of the story is a graph that shows the population of Chinese women aged 15 to 24 will fall to 92 million by 2015 from 106 million in 2010, about an 8 percent drop in just 5 years. By 2050, that segment of the population will plunge by another third to below 60 million.
The rapid decline in the population of young women is an unintended consequence of China's one-child policy. The policy has resulted in a shrinking population of young workers. But the population of young women has been particularly hard hit as Chinese couples, faced with the one-child policy, have often chosen to abort female fetuses in hopes of later having a male child.
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