Fertility and Women's Labour: Two Negative (but Instructive) Findings

In northern Taiwan (as in many other places in South China) two Chinese populations with distinct traditions lived side by side. In one group, the Hokkien, women bound their feet and never worked in the fields; in the other, the Hakka, they did not bind their feet and worked in the fields as men did. Data drawn from household registers for the period 1905-1980 are used to test two hypotheses which argued that women's participation in productive labour reduced their fertility. Both are rejected.