BEIJING — For 22 years, Li Xue has lived as a phantom, banished from mainstream life by China’s “one child” policy. And even now that the Communist Party has declared an end to that policy, she said, there appears to be no quick end to the limbo of many children born, like her, “outside the plan.

“Li Xue is a Chinese citizen,” her mother, Bai Xiuling, said in an interview. “But nobody acknowledges her existence. Only her family does.”

The second daughter of a blue-collar family in southern Beijing, Ms. Li was born contrary to the rules that have limited most urban couples to one child. Like quite a few such “illicit household” children, she grew up, essentially, as a stateless inhabitant of her own country — without the identity documents, rights and services that usually come with citizenship. She never went to school, and has struggled to find work.

Read the article “In One-Child China, Second Children Often Live in Limbo” on nytimes.com.