Every 119th woman gets 18 extra husbands. Problem solved.
Or, televised gladiator fights to the death for large cash prizes. Problem solved.
C’mon, give me a tough one!
Struck me one day when I picked up my then first grade daughter at the end of the school day. Note Shanghai is pretty modern and a lot of parents prefer to have girls. At least there is not a huge bias toward boys like peasants have. All the classes line up. Every class had a line of boys and girls, and *every *line had a couple more boys than girls.
There are also indications (although the last time I heard of it, the differences weren’t large enough to be considered solidly significant) that there may currently be more Chinese women emigrating alone (and those often marry someone from the place they’ve migrated to) than Chinese men emigrating alone (and those are more likely to want a Chinese bride). If true, it’s not helping the numbers.
Yes, there was a sale on parenthesis, why do you ask?
What is the global ratio of women to men? Does it all even out?
IIRC, a normal balance in humanity has slightly more men than women. Men are more likely to be conceived, or carried to full term, or something. In a normal society, more boys are born than girls.
There’s a parallel problem going on in India right now with parents determining the gender of a baby, then aborting it if it’s a girl. I believe there’s legislation in place to prevent parents from determining the gender of the baby in the womb to prevent this.
It makes more sense to worry about the ratio of heterosexual men and women that want to get married than the ratio of total men to women alive.
In China, at least in my experience in Shanghai, the public hospitals (where 99% of all Chinese go to get health and maternity care) will not tell you the sex on the ultrascan. Of course, the private hospitals will do so unofficially.
What do they do, leave the country every three months to renew their tourist visas? I don’t think China gives any special kind of unlimited visa or unlimited residency and work rights to a foreign spouse (then again, I’ve never checked. I probably should, though).
I will have to revisit whatever browserland I ended up in a few weeks ago, but I have read at least one theory that soy and pesticides are actually responsible for more boys being born than girls, in China as well as other places.
Crap, now I have to go find a cite >.<
Absent any intervention, there are slightly more boys born than girls, but boys are also more fragile–they die a bit easier (both in utero and after birth) and suffer a bit more often from birth defects. So it ends up pretty even.
IIRC, ultrasounds are illegal in India to try to combat this problem. So people get illegal ultrasounds, but I hope it does help some. Here’s an article.
It’s also been attributed to a Hepatitis epidemic
Yar, and what little I can find indicates that in the US, as well, male birthrates are higher than females.
Thing is…what’s ‘abnormal’ about it? Darwin would say ‘Guys go fight, die young; duh more are born’.
Still looking for cites >.<
The Wikipedia article onHuman Sex ratio has some maps where you can easily see the sex ratios. Interesting
Russia has a normal sex ratio at birth, but Russian men die younger on average than Russian women, leaving a decent sized population of women without mates. Perhaps China and Russia should simply exchange a few million of either sex.
Looking at the top map, I’m wondering why there’s a shortage of women in Saudi Arabia. Do they just sneak off? (I would)
What the hell happened to all the men 15-65 in Northern Mariana?
Those that don’t sneak off get stoned to death. So I’d sneak off if possible, too.
People say that, but where will the whores come from? With so few women, the vast majority should be able to marry, which won’t leave very many who would rather sell their bodies.
There’s already been a rise in kidnapping of girls and young women, who are sold as ‘brides’ to families in other parts of China who can’t marry off their only sons any other way. Females being scarce doesn’t necessarily lead to an improvement in their status and situation.