Jonathan Last over at the Wall Street Journal has a review of the book Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls and the Consequences of a World Full of Men by Mara Hvistendahl. The story isn't pretty. According to Mr. Last, Hvistendahl documents that:
In nature, 105 boys are born for every 100 girls. This ratio is biologically ironclad. Between 104 and 106 is the normal range, and that's as far as the natural window goes. Any other number is the result of unnatural events.
Yet today in India there are 112 boys born for every 100 girls. In China, the number is 121—though plenty of Chinese towns are over the 150 mark. China's and India's populations are mammoth enough that their outlying sex ratios have skewed the global average to a biologically impossible 107. But the imbalance is not only in Asia. Azerbaijan stands at 115, Georgia at 118 and Armenia at 120.
What is causing the skewed ratio: abortion. If the male number in the sex ratio is above 106, it means that couples are having abortions when they find out the mother is carrying a girl. By Ms. Hvistendahl's counting, there have been so many sex-selective abortions in the past three decades that 163 million girls, who by biological averages should have been born, are missing from the world.
Mr. Last argues that the book is filled with many important observations, data, and insight, and that it's only shortcoming is the tendency of Ms. Hvistendahl to inject her criticisms of views that differ from her own in a way that detracts from her main points.
This is a subject that is long overdue to be "aired out." I think I will add the book to my Summer reading list.
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