The theme of The Economist from two weeks ago was “Gendercide,” and the magazine included a few features on the troubling situation on Asia’s “missing girls.” Though knowledge of China’s one-child policy is widespread, the pure statistics of the country’s gender imbalance are shocking. For example, while an average of 103-106 boys per every 100 girls is considered “natural” (infant boys are more likely to die than infant girls), China’s sex ratio is currently as high as 123 boys to every 100 girls. As a straight up ratio, this may not seem like a large difference, but upscaled to China’s enormous population, these numbers are clearly problematic.
In addition to providing these statistics, the article also makes the argument that while the public is predisposed to blames China’s one-child policy for creating these vast differences, the numbers can’t be aptly explained by this law, and gender imbalance of the same scale is seen in many other Asian countries, not just China. The article claims that the growing availability of technologies that enable sex-selection, including ultrasounds and other fetal-imaging technologies, have created a situation where people in countries with high incomes, and strong desires for smaller families are applying increasing pressure on gendercide. So although the common belief is that “missing girls” are the result of “backward thinking” countries, the opposite is actually true. Income and wealth have been implicated in fostering attitudes of gender preferences, and the ability to make those preferences a reality.
The social implications of this situation are dire. Not only are men facing a much smaller population of prospective wives (which has subsequently led to men seeking wives from foreign countries), but the impact on crime, violence, suicide, and the economy are surprising, and potentially detrimental.
The full read is recommended, but below are some compelling quotes:
…Not all traditional societies show a marked preference for sons over daughters. But in those that do—especially those in which the family line passes through the son and in which he is supposed to look after his parents in old age—a son is worth more than a daughter. A girl is deemed to have joined her husband’s family on marriage, and is lost to her parents. As a Hindu saying puts it, “Raising a daughter is like watering your neighbours’ garden…”
…Mothers in some developing countries say they want sons, not daughters, by margins of ten to one. In China midwives charge more for delivering a son than a daughter…
…But in that decade, ultrasound scanning and other methods of detecting the sex of a child before birth began to make their appearance. These technologies changed everything. Doctors in India started advertising ultrasound scans with the slogan “Pay 5,000 rupees ($110) today and save 50,000 rupees tomorrow” (the saving was on the cost of a daughter’s dowry). Parents who wanted a son, but balked at killing baby daughters, chose abortion in their millions…
…An ultrasound scan costs about $12, which is within the scope of many—perhaps most—Chinese and Indian families. In one hospital in Punjab, in northern India, the only girls born after a round of ultrasound scans had been mistakenly identified as boys, or else had a male twin…
…The spread of fetal-imaging technology has not only skewed the sex ratio but also explains what would otherwise be something of a puzzle: sexual disparities tend to rise with income and education, which you would not expect if “backward thinking” was all that mattered…
…So modernisation and rising incomes make it easier and more desirable to select the sex of your children. And on top of that smaller families combine with greater wealth to reinforce the imperative to produce a son. When families are large, at least one male child will doubtless come along to maintain the family line. But if you have only one or two children, the birth of a daughter may be at a son’s expense. So, with rising incomes and falling fertility, more and more people live in the smaller, richer families that are under the most pressure to produce a son…
…For an example, take Guangdong, China’s most populous province. Its overall sex ratio is 120, which is very high. But if you take first births alone, the ratio is “only” 108. That is outside the bounds of normality but not by much. If you take just second children, however, which are permitted in the province, the ratio leaps to 146 boys for every 100 girls. And for the relatively few births where parents are permitted a third child, the sex ratio is 167. Even this startling ratio is not the outer limit. In Anhui province, among third children, there are 227 boys for every 100 girls, while in Beijing municipality (which also permits exceptions in rural areas), the sex ratio reaches a hard-to-credit 275. There are almost three baby boys for each baby girl…
…And, according to the World Health Organisation, female suicide rates in China are among the highest in the world (as are South Korea’s). Suicide is the commonest form of death among Chinese rural women aged 15-34; young mothers kill themselves by drinking agricultural fertilisers, which are easy to come by. The journalist Xinran Xue thinks they cannot live with the knowledge that they have aborted or killed their baby daughters…
…They calculate that about half the increase in China’s savings in the past 25 years can be attributed to the rise in the sex ratio. If true, this would suggest that economic-policy changes to boost consumption will be less effective than the government hopes…
…Ms Das Gupta points out that, though the two giants are much poorer than South Korea, their governments are doing more than it ever did to persuade people to treat girls equally (through anti-discrimination laws and media campaigns). The unintended consequences of sex selection have been vast. They may get worse. But, at long last, she reckons, “there seems to be an incipient turnaround in the phenomenon of ‘missing girls’ in Asia.
