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The various "requirements" you hear about are NOT China's. China states only that you should have "above average" income, so that you can raise two children. Otherwise, you simply need to meet the normal requirements for adoption from China.
The various requirements you hear about are basically ways in which agencies deal with the fact that there are very few sets of twins available, and tons of families who want to adopt twins. For some reason, just as American famillies overwhelmingly want girls when they adopt, they also express a surprising preference for twins.
Agencies know that China doesn't want dozens and dozens of dossiers requesting twins at a given time, when there might be only one or two sets of twins paper-ready. Agencies don't want to see families disappointed, if they request twins and are referred a single child. They also don't want to see families stay on waiting lists even longer than those that exist for the general population of China parents, because they want twins.
So, to put it bluntly, they use a rationing strategy. They set requirements that weed out most applicants, and leave them with only a handful of families whose dossiers will request twins. Since there aren't too many other ways to distinguish among families systematically, they tend to use income and, occasionally, education, as criteria.
Using income is not a totally bogus notion. Raising two children of the same age is an expensive proposition, whether we're talking about two sets of pediatrician visits for all the "crud" that kids catch as infants and toddlers, or whether we're talking about two sets of college tuitions at the same time. And twins, triplets, and other multiples are more likely to be premature and low birth weight than children born singly. They may have more long term health problems related to their prematurity, and require an extra amount of medical care.
Using parental education is less justifiable, since truck drivers can raise twins as well as college professors. But some agencies use education as a rationing criterion, in part because they know that people with better educations have higher long-term earning power, and in part because they know that CHINA wants to see educated parents who are likely to give their kids good educations. (When I adopted my daughter in her province, the authorities asked me only two questions -- one about my income, and one about how I planned to educate Becca.)
But agencies could probably do just fine without imposing income or education requirements, IF the supply of twins was greater. Unfortunately for American families, the incidence of multiple births in general tends to be quite low. And the incidence of abandonment of healthy Chinese twins is particularly low. So there has to be SOME way of reducing demand so that it is more in line with the supply of twins who need homes.
There ARE agencies that do not ration by setting artificial requirements. They may try to weed out some families by encouraging them to request one child at a time. But if a family is truly prepared for the challenges of parenting two, the agencies will not deny that family a chance to submit a dossier.
Sharon