The unstable future of a world full of men

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.