I was looking at the CIA Factbook for the United Arab Emirates, and noticed something odd with the male/female ratio:
For persons under age 14, the male:female ratio is 1.04. I’d consider this normal.
For persons between 15-66, the ratio is 1.73 males:females
For persons over 65, the ratio is 2.36
The UAE appears to be a modern country with equal medical care for men and women, and women have a longer life expectancy (76.86 years vs. 71.84). So what would explain this disparity?
My guess is they’re counting the many foreign workers who reside there. The vast majority of whom are male and didn’t bring their families. The UAE is filled with workers from India, Pakistan, and other Asian and African countries, nearly all male, who, if they have wives and children, leave them back in the home country and got to work in the UAE and other Gulf countries, sending their pay home to their families and only getting to see them during vacations.
My guess (and that’s all it is) is immigration/guest workers from other Arab nations. Given the social restrictions on women in the region, there probably aren’t many unmarried female immigrants.
Sounds reasonable, but shouldn’t that ratio, in theory, drop for the over-65 group?
That cohort of citizens passed through most of their child-bearing years during the time that health care facilities in the UAE weren’t up to their current modern standards. It’s likely that the female mortality rate (particularly during childbirth) was much higher then.
I don’t want to cast any aspersions on the UAE, since I know nothing about that country’s past customs, but is it possible that 60 years ago a male child would be more valued than a female child? Better food, medical care, etc., were given to boys, so more of them lived through childhood diseases. Now 60 years later that age group ratio is out of whack, reflecting the health care of 60 years ago. The current equal ratio for children reflects the modernization of the country’s medical care system.