China's birth limits create risky gender gap, 32million more men under 20

[jimmy olsen]

Wow, that's a huge imbalance. I disagree that nothing can be done to mitigate it however. I suggest a land invasion of India post haste.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30155400/

China's birth limits create risky gender gap
One study suggests result could be increasing crime, social problems

Most viewed on msnbc.com
updated 2:28 p.m. ET, Fri., April 10, 2009

BEIJING - China has 32 million more young men than young women — a gender gap that could lead to increasing crime — because parents facing strict birth limits abort female fetuses to have a son, a study released Friday said.

The imbalance is expected to steadily worsen among people of childbearing age over the next two decades and could trigger a slew of social problems, including a possible spike in crime by young men unable to find female partners, said an author of the report published in the BMJ, formerly known as the British Medical Journal.

"If you've got highly sexed young men, there is a concern that they will all get together and, with high levels of testosterone, there may be a real risk, that they will go out and commit crimes," said Therese Hesketh, a lecturer at the Centre for International Health and Development at University College London. She did not specify what kinds of crimes.

The study said analysis of China's 2005 census data extrapolated that males under age 20 exceeded their female counterparts by a whopping 32 million.

119 male births for every 100 girls
The study found that China has 119 male births for every 100 girls, compared with 107 to 100 for industrialized countries.

"Nothing can be done now to prevent this imminent generation of excess men," said the report by Hesketh and two professors from eastern China's Zhejiang province.

The study found that the biggest boy-girl gaps are in the 1 to 4-year-old group — meaning that China will have to grapple with the effects of that imbalance when those children reach reproductive age in 15 to 20 years.

China imposed strict birth controls in the 1970s to limit growth of its huge population, noting that resources, especially land, were increasingly strained and that changes were needed in its new push to modernize. The government says the controls have prevented an additional 400 million births in the world's most populous country of 1.3 billion.

But families, especially rural ones, cling to traditional preferences for a male heir, and infanticide of baby girls became a problem. In response, some parts of China allow couples to have a second child if the first is a girl.

The prevalence of sonograms in recent years has allowed parents to learn the gender of their fetus about 20 weeks into pregnancy, Hesketh said, leading to a rise in abortions based on sex. Abortion is legal and widely available.

Tests commonly done by private clinics
China bans tests to determine the fetus' gender for non-medical reasons but they are still commonly done, mainly by underground private clinics in the countryside.

Many countries ban abortion after 12 or sometimes 24 weeks of pregnancy unless the mother's life is at risk. China's laws do not expressly prohibit or even define late-term termination.

A debate about the extent of China's gender imbalance has brewed for years among population experts. Some families hide the births of daughters, never registering them with authorities, so they can legally try for a son, making it harder to measure the problem.

Nancy Riley, a professor of sociology at Bowdoin College in Maine who was not involved with the study, said its methodology looked fine but questioned whether selective abortion indeed counted for almost all the excess males.

"From other research, it is clear that sex-selective abortion does indeed contribute to these high sex ratios, but so do other things (such as) non-reporting of girl births, abandonment, even infanticide," Riley said.

For their study, Hesketh and professors Li Lu of Zhejiang University and Zhu Weixing of Zhejiang Normal University examined data on 4.7 million people under the age of 20 from all parts of the country.

Ethic minorities exempt from birth limits
Ratios in Jiangxi and Henan provinces were the highest in the country, with 140 boys for every 100 girls in the 1-4 age range, the study said.

Hesketh told The Associated Press she thought rates were highest there because both provinces are poor and have largely secular Han Chinese populations. China's often disadvantaged ethnic minorities are exempt from birth limits, and researchers found normal sex ratios in the minority regions of Tibet and largely Muslim Xinjiang.

Ratios were also particularly high among second children as parents again try to ensure they have a son and not another daughter.

China has launched subsidy programs and education campaigns encouraging families to have girls, but they have had a limited impact.

The study said enforcing the existing ban on sex-selective abortion could lead to normalization of the ratios.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press

[DisturbedPervert]

Great news for the gold farming industry.

[saskganesh]

If China wants women, they can just rent some.

[Sheilbh]

I don't think India's much better.

[Ed Anger]

man, what a sausage fest.

[The Nickname Who Was Thursday]

I don't think India's much better.

Maybe not, but presumably both armies will be mostly male

[DisturbedPervert]

I don't think India's much better.

According to the gender ratio at birth stats on wiki, which are a bit different than these, India is as bad as China, and South Korea, Georgia, and Armenia are worse.

[Sheilbh]

I don't think India's much better.

According to the gender ratio at birth stats on wiki, which are a bit different than these, India is as bad as China, and South Korea, Georgia, and Armenia are worse.

Yeah I just looked that up myself. 

[FunkMonk]

Fewer Asian honeys? 

[Valmy]

China: The Gay paradise.

[Camerus]

One thing the article doesn't mention is that there are millions of girls born in the countryside in which there is haphazard or no enforcement of the one child policy, and whose birth goes unrecorded.  Many of these peasant families will have many girls and then stop having babies if they have a son.  So, often, there are many more girls on the countryside than are recorded in official birth statistics.

OTOH, there is a huge cultural, economic and educational gap between the cities and countryside, making importing a rural wife a less than idea option... but still probably better than having no wife at all.

[DontSayBanana]

One thing the article doesn't mention is that there are millions of girls born in the countryside in which there is haphazard or no enforcement of the one child policy, and whose birth goes unrecorded.  Many of these peasant families will have many girls and then stop having babies if they have a son.  So, often, there are many more girls on the countryside than are recorded in official birth statistics.

OTOH, there is a huge cultural, economic and educational gap between the cities and countryside, making importing a rural wife a less than idea option... but still probably better than having no wife at all.

Actually, it did touch on it.

A debate about the extent of China's gender imbalance has brewed for years among population experts. Some families hide the births of daughters, never registering them with authorities, so they can legally try for a son, making it harder to measure the problem.

Nancy Riley, a professor of sociology at Bowdoin College in Maine who was not involved with the study, said its methodology looked fine but questioned whether selective abortion indeed counted for almost all the excess males.

"From other research, it is clear that sex-selective abortion does indeed contribute to these high sex ratios, but so do other things (such as) non-reporting of girl births, abandonment, even infanticide," Riley said.

Anyway, they talk about an increased crime rate among males, but I could see prostitution and child trade becoming even more acute issues in that kind of a setting. China's accounting of its own populace has always been questionable at best, but I also wonder whether the uncounted females from the countryside you're mentioning would be enough to seriously alter the ratio.

[CountDeMoney]

Now's the time to get invested in the Chinese porn industry.

[Josquius]

They really should start making things easier for homosexuality and perhaps even encouraging it. Sure, it doesn't work that way, but its the PRC, they're crazy like that.

[PDH]

They really should start making things easier for homosexuality and perhaps even encouraging it. Sure, it doesn't work that way, but its the PRC, they're crazy like that.

Indeed, they should import some of those Amerifags who are always threatening to teach the fundies how to be gay...