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China, India grapple with the consequences too many men

135 points| bmmayer1 | 8 years ago |mercurynews.com | reply

179 comments

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[+] calvinbhai|8 years ago|reply
Many decades back there was scaremongering among the western nations that overpopulation in China and India will lead to hunger all over the world, which lead to a lot of programs that may have actually lead to US / Europe sponsoring these technologies to become widely available in China and India.

Ford Foundation is often cited as one of the main culprits pushing the ultrasound technology in these countries, the result of which is the current situation of skewed gender ratio.

Upward mobility of women (in search of grooms) leads to more and more frustrated men at lower levels, leads to more crime and overall desperate situation.

Sadly many recent articles follow the typical propaganda based approach and look at blaming patriarchy etc.

src: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/01/04/what-money-can... https://www.amazon.com/Unnatural-Selection-Choosing-Girls-Co... http://indiafacts.org/was-ford-foundation-culpable-in-aborti...

[+] adventured|8 years ago|reply
> Ford Foundation is often cited as one of the main culprits pushing the ultrasound technology in these countries, the result of which is the current situation of skewed gender ratio.

The spread of ultrasound technology in China and India, did not result in the current situation of skewed gender ratios. You're confusing the underlying cause (desire for male labor or heirs) and a healthcare tool.

How that technology was used, may have had a role in amplifying or accelerating the result (they could still just kill the baby girl after birth). Obvious, simple proof: ultrasound tech didn't cause the same extreme gender skew outcome in the US, Germany, France, UK, Russia, South Korea or Japan, those nations chose not to disproportionately kill baby girls despite having ultrasound tech (that's also the case for nearly all nations).

China and India should have widely available ultrasound tech. All nations should.

[+] 1ris|8 years ago|reply
>Many decades back there was scaremongering ....

I can't wrap my head around the fact how people did and still dismiss this as scaremongering. On a site like HN, non less, where most people should know the properties of exponential growth.

I mean, how much fantasy, how much wishfull thinking and how much ignorance is needed to not see this ending in catastrophe?

Sorry if this is insulting. I have no other way to express it. Just what makes you think it isn't a absolute massive problem, and isn't the root of most of humanities problems?

[+] georgeecollins|8 years ago|reply
It's interesting that there is a similar imbalance in China and India (~35m). That implies to me that the imbalance was not caused by the one child policy, but by sonograms and abortions.
[+] chaostheory|8 years ago|reply
I could be wrong but the sonograms and abortions are also just a side effect. The real problem is that neither place puts much importance on gender equality. Women have even less opportunities than men over there, compared to the West. That said, things have improved and continue to improve though the pace is really slow
[+] YetAnotherNick|8 years ago|reply
Of course? Government knows this. It is illegal for doctors to tell the gender before birth in India. In fact, due to weight of it, it is one of the few illegal activities regularly checked by authorities and media, and the culprits are given harsh punishments.
[+] azernik|8 years ago|reply
The claim about the one-child policy is just that it increases the attractiveness of selective abortion, since you only have one chance at a son.
[+] glasslion|8 years ago|reply
At least in China, it has nothing to do with sonograms or abortions. Chinese doctors are not allowed to tell parents the gender strictly. Female babies are killed after they are born.
[+] praneshp|8 years ago|reply
It's like quoting a wikipedia article, but there was an episode about this in a LastWeekTonight type show[0]. Two takeaways:

1. One of the southern states (that I'm from) ranks super-high in killing baby girls, despite what one would think intuitively.

2. Doctors offer Levi's style buy 1, get 2nd 50% off style packages for sex-determination test + abortions (both of which are banned). To ensure that parents-to-be get both, they lie that the foetus is a girl.

[0] http://www.satyamevjayate.in/female-foeticide/femalefoeticid..., scroll down for the episode

[+] ggg9990|8 years ago|reply
How could the one child policy create a gender imbalance? Every child born has a 50% probability of being either gender.
[+] dm3730|8 years ago|reply
Just reading about this and looking at a sex ratio map, https://www.mapsofindia.com/census2011/female-sex-ratio.html , there is a massive difference between a diagonal line between the North and the South. North India is what is described as dominated by patriarchal religions like Islam, Christianity, Islamicized-Hinduism and Urdu-Hindi languages whereas South India and North-East India practices animist or ancestor worship Hinduism (less Islamic/Christian influence) and speak Dravidian or Austro-Asiatic languages. It is like two separate countries. The North seems to be a terrible mess with well below normal female births.
[+] tarlinian|8 years ago|reply
Generally speaking I was under the impression that Islam and Christianity in particular are significantly better represented in southern India, especially if you consider political influence.
[+] sumedh|8 years ago|reply
Is it the religion playing a role or education/wealth?

You see the same divide between North and South India with education and wealth, Southern India is more educated and wealthy compared to the Northern regions.

[+] pcr0|8 years ago|reply
This divide extends into politics too.

The North is dominated by a centre-right democratic party and a far-right nationalist party, whereas the South is a cacophony of center-right to far-left parties

[+] Kluny|8 years ago|reply
> In India, there is the opposite effect: Because brides are scarce, families are under less pressure to save for expensive dowries.

So weird. Note that it says "less" pressure, not no pressure. Women are in short supply, yet their culture still requires the bride's family to pay the groom to take her? More evidence that those macroeconomic supply and demand curves are nonsense.

[+] upofadown|8 years ago|reply
>“In the future, there will be millions of men who can’t marry, ...

Why? Two husbands are better than just one. More resources to support the family. Flip a coin and then alternate on the kids.

Multiple wives are allowed in other countries. Why not allow multiple husbands instead? It wouldn't work for everyone but it only has to work for some...

[+] sumedh|8 years ago|reply
> Why not allow multiple husbands instead?

Read an article (lazy to search it again) which says it is already happening in some North Indian states like Punjab and Harayana where brothers "share" a wife.

[+] a2tech|8 years ago|reply
Isn’t the consequence usually unrest and war?
[+] gph|8 years ago|reply
Historically that would definitely be true, but there's a couple interesting anecdotes in the article where some of the men mention spending their time holed up alone either on their phone, watching TV, or doing various leisure activities like karoke. In the past they didn't have those kinds of distractions and/or solitariness. The reality is they may just grow old and sad often stuck in their remote village far cut off from any center of power or importance.
[+] curun1r|8 years ago|reply
Those are two things that can happen, but a more generalized version of that is an increased drive for exceptionalism. Men will take more risks to succeed at all costs because the safe route means failure. That can be mean war, where many men die and the survivors are the exceptional ones. But it can also mean a highly-stratified society with a class of unsuccessful men who will never marry or have children who are likely treated as not much above slave labor.
[+] batuhanw|8 years ago|reply
Wars are killing men, which isn't happening for a while like before. So men population grow fast and there is nothing to decrease it.
[+] pacetherace|8 years ago|reply
This is also causing the average age when girls are getting married to go down and it is increasing the age difference between the bride and groom.
[+] clamprecht|8 years ago|reply
Is there currently any country with too many women? I've heard interesting things about Paraguay, which lost like 90% of their men after some really bad wars, and how it changed their society.
[+] lzoo|8 years ago|reply
The 60-year-old mom who still cooks for her seven sons + her husband... Noooo! learn how to make your own bread - at least.
[+] rabboRubble|8 years ago|reply
And now you know why that woman may have aborted female fetuses. Avoidance of the continuation of miserable life for the women of India! Better to have boys that get married, then you can sit back and boss around the daughter-in-law.

Oh whoopsie, everybody aborted the girls? Hmmmm, I wonder why.

[+] ryanx435|8 years ago|reply
It's ridiculous that you assume cooking is a burden for her.

I host family meals regularly and really enjoy cooking for everyone, plus it provides an opportunity for everyone to get together.

Maybe stop looking at everything with such a negative filter.

[+] emmelaich|8 years ago|reply
What's with the ungrammatical title?

It's the MercuryNews title, so not the submitters mistype.

Reminds me that USA Today had a front page heading with technology misspelled as techonolgy

[+] Animats|8 years ago|reply
The Mercury News was acquired by the Contra Costa Tribune, and barely has a newsroom any more.
[+] whooshee|8 years ago|reply
Many of those 'more men' are from villages who didn't like girls. So they are swallowing that on their own, which is kind of re-balancing. By the way, given the tech we have these days, more and more young people seem to be OK to live only with themselves. Let alone VR, if you will.
[+] ShabbosGoy|8 years ago|reply
I wonder what the long term impact will be on their societies. If brides are scarce, would it lead to the betterment of social conditions for women in these (traditionally) chauvinistic societies?
[+] imron|8 years ago|reply
Unfortunately, that's unlikely. I mean it might happen in urban well-developed areas, but if history is any indicator then for most parts of the country women will likely be worse off, and you'll see things like an increase in kidnappings, forced marriages, and shared marriages with multiple men.

Bride kidnapping is already having somewhat of a resurgence in China - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bride_kidnapping#China

[+] onetimemanytime|8 years ago|reply
>>“In the future, there will be millions of men who can’t marry, and that could pose a very big risk to society,”

May I suggest a war between the two countries? This problem will be solved. I was being semi-serious but I remember reading about war being more likely since China had so many men.

[+] batuhanw|8 years ago|reply
Wars were preventing overgrowing of populations before. Now technology, peaceful era causing overpopulation of homo-sapiens which is really big problem. Thus I think what you suggest makes sense. Also it will give some people reason to live, distraction, some glory.
[+] senatorobama|8 years ago|reply
I wish China and India would be friends instead of frenemies. Think of the possibilities.
[+] ams6110|8 years ago|reply
> sex-selective technology

Nice way to say aborting female babies.

[+] natch|8 years ago|reply
Or abandoning, also happens a lot, as I learned when someone in my family adopted a girl.
[+] Mindless2112|8 years ago|reply
Somehow they couldn't manage to call it "women's health".
[+] jxramos|8 years ago|reply
heh, just another stroll though euphemylane.
[+] oregondan|8 years ago|reply
> ...demographers say it will take decades for the ramifications of the bulge to fade away.

heh