The unstable future of a world full of men
Internally displaced Afghan children are
pictured at a camp in Kabul last week. As the global population hits
seven billion, experts are warning that skewed gender ratios could fuel
the emergence of volatile “bachelor nations” driven by an aggressive
competition for brides. The precise consequences of what French
population expert Christophe Guilmoto calls the “alarming demographic
masculinisation” of countries like India and China as the result of
sex-selective abortion remain unclear.
AFP
INDIA: As the global population hits seven billion, experts are
warning that skewed gender ratios could fuel the emergence of volatile
“bachelor nations” driven by an aggressive competition for brides. The
precise consequences of what French population expert Christophe
Guilmoto calls the “alarming demographic masculinisation” of countries
such as India and China as the result of sex-selective abortion remain
unclear.
But many demographers believe the resulting shortage of adult women
over the next 50 years will have as deep and pervasive an impact as
climate change.
The statistics behind the warnings are grimly compelling.
Nature provides an unbending biological standard for the sex ratio at
birth of 104-106 males to every 100 females. Any significant divergence
from that narrow range can only be explained by abnormal factors.
In India and Vietnam the figure is around 112 boys for every 100
girls. In China it is almost 120 to 100, and in some places higher than
130.
And the trend is spreading: to regions like the South Caucasus, where
Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia all post birth ratios of more than 115
to 100, and further west to Serbia and Bosnia.
Global awareness of the problem was raised back in 1990 with an
article by the Nobel prize-winning Indian economist Amartya Sen that
carried the now famous title: “More Than 100 Million Women Are Missing.”
Demographers say that figure is now more than 160 million — women
selected out of existence by the convergence of traditional preferences
for sons, declining fertility and, most crucially, the prevalence of
cheap prenatal sex-determination technology.
As many as half a million female foetuses are estimated to be aborted
each year in India, according to a study by British medical journal The
Lancet.
“Earlier villagers had to go to the city to get a sonogram
(ultrasound),” said Poonam Muttreja, executive director of the
non-profit Population Foundation of India. “Today sonographers are going
into the villages to cater to people who want sons.”
Even if the sex ratio at birth returned to normal in India and China
within 10 years, Guilmoto says men in both countries would still face a
“marriage squeeze” for decades to come.
“Not only would these men have to marry significantly older, but this
growing marriage imbalance would also lead to a rapid rise in male
bachelorhood... an important change in countries where almost everyone
used to get married,” he said.
How that change might manifest itself is hotly debated, although
nearly everyone agrees there is no foreseeable upside.
AFP
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