The distorting of the human sex ratio
My latest Mind and Matter column in the Wall Street Journal:
Even a rational optimist is pessimistic about some things. Here's one: the gradual distortion of the human sex ratio by sex-selective abortion. A new essay by the demographer Nicholas Eberstadt concludes that "the practice has become so ruthlessly routine in many contemporary societies that it has impacted their very population structures." He finds "ample room for cautious pessimism" in the fact that this phenomenon is still very much on the increase.
For obscure reasons, the human sex ratio is always slightly male-biased, but in the natural state it rarely goes above 105 male births per 100 female ones, except in small samples. In China's last mini-census in 2005, the ratio was nearly 120 to 100 and in some districts over 150. That this is caused by sex-selective abortion (and not, for example, by a hepatitis-B epidemic, which can favor male births) is proved by a ratio of 107 to 100 among first-born children but nearer 150 among ones born later.
China is not the only country where this is happening. By the early 21st century, all four Asian "tigers"—South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan—had a "naturally impossible" ratio of 108 or higher. India has an increasing ratio, as high as 120 in some states. Even some European and central Asian countries (including Albania, Georgia and even Italy) have unnaturally male-biased births. Nearly half the world falls in this category.
For 2005 to 2010, the United Nations puts the world sex ratio at birth at 107 boys to 100 girls. Assuming 105 is natural, Dr. Eberstadt calculates that this translates into a global "girl deficit" of at least 32 million. The consequences, in terms of unmarried and perhaps disruptive men, may be serious and long-lasting.
The phenomenon apparently gets worse with prosperity. Countries like Vietnam have shown male-biased birth ratios only since starting to grow rapidly richer. An analysis by Christophe Guilmoto and Sébastien Oliveau has shown that, in China and India, the problem is more acute in fairly rich regions.
Why? As people get richer, they plan smaller families, and those who have had a girl first are prepared to go to great lengths to ensure having a boy the next time. Economic growth also means more access to ultrasound scanning and abortion. Female infanticide after birth still happens, but it is both psychologically harder than abortion and less easy to disguise as a medical necessity.
Of course, near-perfect sex selection can be achieved with in-vitro fertilization (by implanting only male embryos), but this will remain a luxury of the very rich. What about sperm selection? A clinical trial getting under way in the U.S. will test a method for sorting human sperm into X (female determining) and Y (male) types; it's already used in animals such as dairy cattle with 93% accuracy. If this method becomes cheap, it's easy to imagine clinics offering it in China and India.
Policy seems largely powerless to fight this problem. Sex-selective abortion is illegal in virtually all countries. China's authoritarian "one-child policy" is in marked contrast with India's more laissez-faire attitude to family planning, yet both have produced widespread killing of female fetuses.
All of this presupposes a continuing general preference for boys in such societies, something that should eventually wane as their economies develop more equal employment opportunities. Given the way in which technology is evolving to make sex selection easier, perhaps the only short-term hope is to shame people. South Korea's sex ratio at birth reached 115 to 100 in the 1990s but has since fallen back to 107, thanks to what Mr. Eberstadt calls a "spontaneous and largely uncoordinated congealing of a mass movement for honoring, protecting and prizing daughters."
Comments (16)
If a society permits abortion on demand (which many do), then it permits abortion on demand. Permitting abortion on demand *except* when this is used to achieve sex selection seems peculiarly inconsistent.
Like many problems in life, this one is best solved by simply waiting for it to go away.
A man wants to leave a legacy. A daughter can't be his legacy. He can't teach lessons on life to his daughter, as the differences in experience and needs are too vast.
Why presume the change in South Korea is due to shaming, rather than market forces? The more men there are, the more valuable women are relative to men as partners.
So, is your conclusion, Matt, that the driver for this 'practice' is less-than-equal employment opportunities? That would explain why it seems to occur in countries where living standards are increasing but not 'first world' countries like the US, Canada, Australia etc?
People being people, one day no doubt the wind will shift and blow from the opposite direction. Then it will really mean something to "Be a Man"; like something from the Arabian Knights. The psychology of preferring a boy to a girl is really something the NSF should be 'granting' more $$$$ to these days, after they 'grant' much more to the phenom of girls going solo and having babies without the marriage rite and the 'social' commitment of the 'traditional' male other (other than Uncle Sugar and AWDC that is) to jointly raise the children. Solo-By-Choice Mothers are a real modern change, what with Birth Control being so effective. Has our culture changed so much, or is all this a little 'flash in the pan' that will disappear if Congress ever 'Balances' the budget? Ahhhh.. Human Psychology, the most twisted subject of all.
Anonymous, I sincerely hope that you haven't got any daughters.
What incentives are there to sway the women away from preferring boys over girls?
Robin,
Nick Eberstadt discusses this in his essay. The notion that women would get more valuable in a male-biased society seems to be coming true in a rise of prostitution rather than a reversal of birth preferences. South Korea stands out from the other tigers in seeing this partial reversal of the preference and is the only country that had this campaign. see the chart here:
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/imgLib/20111213_EberstadtFigure41000w.gif
Matt
Interestingly enough, in the Western world families would, if they could choose, rather have girls.
I wonder if this boy preference is another version of the democracy / income watershed.
Countries which achieve a GDP per head of $6,000 (?) that become democratic stay democratic. Countries that achieve democracy (or have democracy thrust upon them, like Iraq) are unstable as democracies. Countries that are poor are almost never democratic.
As wealth increases, the value of females is better appreciated?
The figure for Hong Kong may be misleading with selective abortion being practised only by recent immigrants?
Yeah, I read "The White Plague" in college--where women who survive become cherished and valuable. But as breeders. Didn't seem very promising in sci-fi either.<p>
But in addition there are blood tests nearly ready that will tell very early in pregnancy the gender of the fetus. I'll bet it becomes completely outside of the medical structure to determine gender and then end a pregnancy. </p>
where is the terribleness of biased sex ratio?
The main thing I see is distorted mating market. Where men do all itheir might to get a mate, and many get frustrated with bad consequences.
Long term lower fertity, in theory, can be corrected with enough incentives to have kids (one female can in pronciple have ten kids....)
I am just curious about whether there are more bad consequences.
Btw, i am still having Gottman on my mind (John), and here is great writing
To paraphrase the writer Lois McMaster Bujold: "Don't these people want any grandchildren?"
Jazi zilber asked for downsides:
The surplus males will be excluded from marriage. The vast majority of them will not accept celibacy. Their choices are to become practicing homosexuals, aggressive rapists, persistent customers of prostitutes, or seducers. Unrelieved sexual tension is accompanied by rises in violence. This will result in intra-cultural violence, but also raises the spectre of armies of hundreds of millions of sex-crazed men marching out to perform rape and pillage upon their neighbours.
Matt,
It stil holds true that in lower primates lower caste parents are more likely to have females and vice versa, yes? I believe you explained it that it was easier for females to marry up than for males to marry up- for various reasons.
Could this be a mirror in humans? After all, traditionally, boys/men are able to work in the fields and didn't require paying someone to marry them with dowries. Now, men in these countries (mostly all pretty sexist at their core, yes?)are able to do better professionally where women are still viewed as being wives and mothers as their top value. So, it makes sense that if you want successful offspring to provide the best grandchild and the best chance at letting your genes continue, you would want a male in these countries (unless you knew you were going to have an amazingly hot female that could easily marry a successful male.)
I'm not pessimistic about it. It will balance out over time. However, I am a bit suprised that this would suprise you.
I think this is a problem that will solve itself over a generation or two.
People will see that daughters give them grandchildren but sons not so much. They will see that daughters are more sought after- and in some cultures that means a bigger dowry.
They will then adjust their preferences.
Beginning of December, a program aired on ABC 20/20 about India’s deadly secret. It was about 40 million girls who have vanished. All aborted before they could take their first breath. Their crime was that they were girls. As you know the gender ratios is India are terribly skewed about 914 girls per 1,000 boys. In Punjab it is about 833 girls per1,000 boys. Unfortunately this happens amongst the privileged and the educated also. The only woman who has brought cases against her in-laws and husband is Dr Mitu Khurana. Please watch her story and sign her petition for justice. Please give those 40 million girls silenced forever, a voice. Please forward this to as many friends as possible.
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/a-mothers-fight-to-save-her-daughters/
http://gendercide.epetitions.net/
and here is the link to her website-
http://www.mitukhurana.wordpress.com
After you sign the petition, there will be a request from the site for a donation. This donation is totally discretionary and does not in any way or form affect or benefit Dr Mitu Khurana. All she is asking for is your support (signing this petition) so that pressure can be put on the Indian authorities that the whole world is watching them in total disbelief as they make a young mother run around in vain for four years in search of justice