All the Missing Girls, Continued

So what will the social ramifications of 160 million missing women be 10 years from now? 20 years from now? Here's a clue:

But Birbal was unable to find a bride in Haryana, which has the most unbalanced sex ratio in the country, with 877 women for every 1,000 men. Among under sevens, that ratio drops to just 830 girls for every 1,000 boys.

Think about what happens when someone "imports" a bride from a place where sex ratios are more balanced: he simply "exports" the imbalance somewhere else. This is a zero sum trade. The pain is simply going to be passed down the income scale, to be fully absorbed by the poorest, who will find themselves incapable of forming families. Ever.

All the Missing Girls

There are now an estimated 160,000,000 fewer women than there "should" be in the world. That figure is calculated from natural sex ratios (male births to female births) and life expectancy, and shows that something very unnatural is occurring.

In demographic terms, I can't imagine there's ever been a bigger impact with less awareness than what's happened to cause this massive imbalance:

The scale of that number evokes the genocidal horrors of the 20th century. But notwithstanding the depredations of the Chinese politburo, most of the abortions were (and continue to be) uncoerced. The American establishment helped create the problem, but now it’s metastasizing on its own: the population-control movement is a shadow of its former self, yet sex selection has spread inexorably with access to abortion, and sex ratios are out of balance from Central Asia to the Balkans to Asian-American communities in the United States.

Forget the politics. Everyone--Chinese, American, liberal, conservative--should recognize that this is tragic.