Institute For The Future

longterm risk management in rural China

There are many new risks in contemporary China--the risk of losing one's job and being subject to a free labor market, the risk of becoming priced out of the housing market, and the risk of getting ill and not being able to pay for healthcare are new within the last ten years or so. However, the ultimate risk to be managed in rural China hasn't changed: the risk of not having descendants.

 

Gender and courtship have changed greatly during the years of economic reform, but the idea that a son will remain part of the family and a daughter will leave the family to live with her future husband's family remains to today.

 

Ensuring for housing for the future, then, becomes especially important those with sons. One family I visited had a 6 year old boy--and a pile of tree trunks in the corner of the courtyard, waiting for twenty years in the future when he'd need his own set of rooms attached to the house.