What Are The Consequences of A Skewed Sex Ratio?
Do the consequences self-refute the purpose of male preference?
Many countries in Asia, northern Africa and the Middle East have much higher ratio differences from male to female populations, due to the preference of birthing males as opposed to females. Because of this, it has led to an excess in males with no partner to find, and a number of “missing women.” This not only has social and cultural consequences on the man, but on the woman as well. I’m going to talk about how the data I collect can tell a story much bigger than the numbers.
China has the highest sex ratio in the world, with 115–116 male births per 100 female births. There is an average ratio of 103 to 107 boys born per 100 girls, and that’s due to the higher probability of miscarrying a female over a male baby; however, countries like China, Pakistan, India, Vietnam and so on purposely make this ratio even more skewed. In India, evidence and data show that parents are likely to keep trying to have children until they have a boy. “At a local level, a study of a large Delhi hospital known for maternal care showed very similar results. The overall sex ratio was male-biased with only 806 girls per 1000 boys. But this got significantly worse when the family already had a daughter: 720 girls per 1000 boys if there was one previous girl and only 178 girls per 1000 boys for two previous daughters” (Our World In Data).
Although women naturally live longer than men, there is still a skewed sex ratio in many countries. “The evidence for sex-selective abortion and discrimination against girls is now strong across several countries. Not only does the increase in sex ratios coincide with the availability of prenatal sex determination technologies, there is also clear evidence from studies investigating the use and promotion of such methods”(Our World In Data). When prenatal diagnosis was introduced, medical abortion was legalized a year later. I wish that could have been a coincidence, but medical abortion was probably a byproduct of this new discovery. “As a result, roughly 50 million excess males under the age of 20 today reside in those two countries. And at least in China, that wave has not yet crested” (wired.com). Besides Brazil and Mexico, India has the 3rd largest homicide rates in the world. The problem is that the culture didn’t view sex-selective abortion as unethical, and thought it was just a good way to balance out the population. This is obviously useless when there is now an extreme shortage in those countries.
The debate on why there is a preference for a son is a bit confusing. Many have the excuse that they want to continue on the family name, but there are mainly economic benefits that come along with it. The consequences are often avoided however of using this tactic.
The problem with male preference is the amount of missing women and then single men. Younger men face a difficulty finding women, because the still single older men are still out there hopelessly looking. Looking for love will be less authentic and more about monetary benefit for women, as they’ll only go to the wealthiest, having an unnecessary plethora of options.The most self-refuting concept of all is that when there are too many single men to find a relationship in the shortage of women, carrying along the family name won’t even be able to happen.
Another issue with this concept of male preference is how it affects women. Women are solely viewed as wives. Their opportunities are often shut down earlier, and they aren’t valued as much or taken as seriously; nevertheless, women feel a lot more pressure than they should. In this article it states that women in China make only a fifth (20%) of what men make for doing the same occupation/position.
This chart shows the countries with the most deaths of children aged 5 and under. This also however correlates strongly with the countries of skewed sex ratios, or at least the largest countries correlate.
This scatter plot above represents the positive correlation between sex ratio at birth and at 5 years old. It shows multiple countries in Asia and small islands at the top right — China, India, Armenia, Malta, the Channel Islands, and so on. With small islands, family lineage being emphasized makes a lot of sense; however this isn’t just happening in small islands, but in some of the most populated countries in the world.
Although infanticide is context-dependent, it is very prevalent in girls (the common assumption). Postnatally, girls are often more neglected and receive unfair treatment. But where are all the “missing girls?” “Across a dozen countries, the chasm amounts to 23.1 million missing female births since 1970” (wired.com). Doing out the math, it’s been 23.1 missing female births /49 years ~471,429 missing female births a year. This loss of women will slowly reduce the population rates as time goes on; nevertheless, if populations continue to decrease in countries that practice sex-selective abortion/postnatal infanticides, they’ll run out of people altogether.
As shown above, the population growth rate is going down. This data may be skewed because not as much was collected earlier on (or the fact that it’s more difficult to raise the growth rate of an even higher population), but it doesn’t seem to be going up. This might be meaning that max population is on its way to its peak in those sex-biased countries. “Rapidly declining fertility rates — from an average of 6 children down to 2.4 children per woman — in India means its population growth has fallen significantly over the last few decades. This means that while it will be the most populous country for the rest of the century, it’s expected to reach ‘peak population’ in the late 2050s at around 1.7 billion before slowly falling in the second half of the century” (ourworldindata.org).
This visualization shows the upward trend from 1950 to 2015 in not only an increase in births, but an exponential increase in deaths. The ratio keeps getting higher between deaths and births, and the sooner birth rate continues to slow down, the closer those two parallel ends will meet at 1. The countries I chose to visualize were Malta (island off the coast of Italy), Armenia (located in Eurasia border area), the United States, India and China. Those countries are listed in the order the plot progresses them in, with Malta and Armenia closest to the origin, and the United States next. India, the second closest to the top, had a spike in births around 1990, and then that number greatly decreased by 2015. China seems to have a lot of consistency with births, but deaths are increasing even more; nevertheless, it is projected that India will soon take over the world’s largest population by 2100.
Sex-selective abortion is alive and well in many parts of the world, some more than others. There could be many reasons as to why the population is decreasing, such as socio-economic factors or minor cultural changes that do not revolve around sex-biases. We however must recognize the clear but unspoken evidence that some groups of nationalities, if still holding true to their beliefs that sex-selectivity is ethically “okay,” will eventually become endangered populations.
REFERENCES
Chinese women ‘hold up half the SKY’, for 20 per cent less pay. (2019, March 07). Retrieved September 13, 2019, from https://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/2188933/chinese-women-earn-fifth-less-men-and-gap-widening-fast
Molteni, M. (2019, April 15). First big survey of births finds millions of missing women. Retrieved September 16, 2019, from https://www.wired.com/story/first-big-survey-of-births-finds-millions-of-missing-women/
Ritchie, H., & Roser, M. (2019, June 13). Gender ratio. Retrieved September 13, 2019, from https://ourworldindata.org/gender-ratio#biology-or-discrimination-which-countries-have-skewed-sex-ratios-at-birth
Roser, M. (2013, July 06). Homicides. Retrieved September 13, 2019, from https://ourworldindata.org/homicides
Roser, Ritchie, H., & Ortiz-Ospina, E. (2013, May 09). World population growth. Retrieved September 16, 2019, from https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth
Roser. (2013, May 10). Child & infant mortality. Retrieved September 13, 2019, from https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality
