Xiaojia Bao & Sebastian Galiani & Kai Li & Cheryl Xiaoning Long, (2020). 

In the past 40 years, a large number of children have been abandoned or abducted in China. We argue that the implementation of the one-child policy has significantly increased both child abandonment and child abduction and that, furthermore, the cultural preference for sons in China has shaped unique gender-based patterns whereby a majority of the children who are abandoned are girls and a majority of the children who are abducted are boys. 

An abstract is available to view online with restricted access to the full document. In Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, vol 208, pages 95-119

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